This weekend in Vancouver is the annual Vancouver Fashion Week. I had the opportunity the other night to attend the opening bash down at Bar None in Yaletown. I had a really great time taking photographs and interacting with a lot of the local models and clothing designers. There are events all weekend, so make sure to check out their main web site if you are interested in seeing some local fashion. I just got an email saying I was on the guest list for the swim suit portion today, so I may have to head out and check that out, even though I really don’t have much time this weekend. I also ...

Nearly one year ago today, four guys that I had never met before decided it would be a good idea to put my face through the plate glass window of a 7-11. Prior to that one moment in time, now forever etched into my memory, I was upstairs at the Railway Club in Vancouver, enjoying a few beers with some friends in celebration of their wedding earlier that night. Upon exiting the building, somewhere between catching a cab and eating a bag of nachos, I overheard these four guys harassing a bunch of girls just a few feet away from me. People have told me after the fact that perhaps I should have just ...

Normally I don’t take breaks at work, at least not many long ones. In fact, I usually buy a small lunch and eat it at my desk, using that brief time to catch up on blogs are read the current news. But yesterday, I suddenly got the urge to go outside and shoot some photos in the afternoon, so that’s what I did. I didn’t have my SLR, so I just shot with my point and shoot, which is always rather depressing. No matter – here are a couple shots of a surprisingly sunny Vancouver. And one this morning taken from my patio. PS – For all of you who are expecting free prints, they’ve ...

I’m so far behind on everything, it’s not even funny. Being in the hospital set me back over a week, and my recent trip out east set me back even further. I’m going to try and use this weekend to catch up. Here’s what I need to do. Tidy apartment and do laundry. I hate this part. Unfuck photoshop some how Mail photos to everyone Backup computer and free some space Install XP via boot camp so I can play games Finish wedding photos for Mike and Kim (sorry guys) Answer a bazillion emails that I haven’t yet. If I haven’t answered you, I’m sorry 🙁 If I have, feel lucky! Drink ...

The giant duck I bought last year at Christmas I am Christmas fanatic. I love hanging out in malls and watching people, or sitting at home listening to Christmas music. Last year I left my tree up until April, just because it made me sad whenever I thought about taking it down. I’ve been known to buy random stuffed animals (including this huge ass duck) to give away to people during the holidays. There’s a Christmas moose I bought who now holds my door open in my room. I once took part in several nationwide mathematics competitions, two of which I managed to obtain medals for (cue the ...

Lately at work I’ve been doing a few statecharts for things, so I thought I would repost the one I made last year that I did while completely bored last year. There’s a cool program (“cool” being an extremely relative notion in this instance) you can get called graphviz that can create these things fairly quickly. “Happy Times” State Transition Chart I had a cool idea for a contest too I’m gonna blog about and get some participation in. ...

So it’s not very often something can make me bust out loud laughing, but this did the trick. I’m a closet Star Trek nerd, and used to sit around and watch episodes with my dad growing up. One of my favorites is when Kirk takes sand and rocks and shit and blows up that Godzilla looking guy on that weird planet. He’s that good. I found this photo on Christie’s facebook page, and she told me it was cool to blog it. This thing still cracks me up every time I see it. ** Update, the green Godzilla looking thing is a Gorn. Thanks guys. ...

I just read an article online that did a comparison between a bunch of different machines running Windows Vista. You know who the winner was? A Macbook Pro. The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year–or for that matter, ever–is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro’s PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway’s E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook’s score is far more impressive ...

Not much new to report. Work is going fairly well, and I’ve met most of our Ontario company now. Derek and I hit “downtown” Kanata and hit a few local establishments tonight, which was actually a lot of fun. I have two more days here, and then I get on a plane and head to Toronto for Matt’s concert. I’m actually getting pretty excited about the whole ordeal. I talked with Tony briefly tonight and he’s in the same hotel as me, which is cool. The next time I probably blog will be in Toronto, a few hours before the pre-show meet-up. ...

The plane ride was fairly uneventful. I haven’t flown West Jet for a while, but thankfully everyone on board still had a great sense of humour, and the flight was nice and smooth. I was pretty happy to see that new Harry Potter on the in flight entertainment, since I haven’t had time to see it and I had really wanted to. On West Jet, you have to pay if you want to watch a movie, but I figure I can kill a paperback in about 4 hours or so, so paying $5 to watch a movie isn’t that bad a deal. The rest of the time I spent messing around with my new iPod, and I have to say, that thing is really ...

Last night I met up with John and Rebecca to watch the hockey game down at Fogg ‘n Suds. I’m not super familiar with the Canucks line anymore, so being around super hockey Canucks people is a bit intimidating. That being said, I did manage watch some of the game and to lose myself for a time in the high-ball fishbowls that they were serving there. John and me, hanging out at John and Rebecca’s house – not sure why we put hats on I’m smack in the middle of packing for my trip, trying to figure out what to bring and what not to bring. As the first leg of the trip is work-related, I ...

This should be my last Apple post for a while, but I thought this was newsworthy. Photo from here A friend sent me an email this morning which basically talks about Vancouver being chosen for a new Apple store. After years of speculation and anticipation, there is finally confirmation that that an Apple store will occupy a space inside the Pacific Centre Mall in downtown Vancouver (BC). The three-block indoor mall has been undergoing a long-term and extensive renovation that included demolition, construction and the juggling and moving of several retailers, along with the addition of new stores. ...

A few weeks ago I went down to the Bell Mobility store and asked how much longer I was shackled to their service. Unfortunately, it’s on the order of two more years, which means I really can’t get a iPhone and switch to Rogers (although, I’m still not sure that’s a great option either). So tonight, while talking to Jason, he was telling me about his recent iPod Touch purchase. It’s basically the same as the iPhone, except it doesn’t have a camera or obviously a phone. But the user-interface is roughly the same, and it has Wi-Fi, so you can surf the web wherever you are. The first ...

Warning — you’re probably gonna hear far too much information in this post, but I need to vent a bit. Ever since being discharged from the hospital, I’ve had some pretty bad digestive problems. It started with just your run of the mill diarrhea, but has slowly gotten worse over the last month. Lately I’ve been waking up a bit crampy, and have to hit the bathroom fairly often during the day right now. I spent the other evening searching on the internet, and finally pinned it down to antibiotic associated diarrhea, due mainly to the IV and oral antibiotics I had while fighting pneumonia: Antibiotic-associated ...

Well, tonight I completed the update procedure, which went off with out a hitch. I’m currently back to 10.4.8, and so far so good. I’m not sure if I’ll upgrade to 10.4.10, or wait for Leopard to come out next week and grab that. We’ll see. I also spent a bit of time talking to the Lacie drive support guys today. They basically said the drive was hooped and to take it back to Future Shop. So tonight, I went down, returned the Lacie drive, but instead of getting the same one, grabbed an LG drive (which said it didn’t support Mac). I figured it was more money, and I had all the system software ...

One of the pieces of technology I’ve always thought was pretty cool was the new Lightscribe CD burners out there on the market. Prior to Lightscribe technology, the best a home user could really do was to be an ink-jet printer, print out a CD label, and then mess with putting it on in the right place. Some companies tried to make blank CDs with actual, printable surfaces, but those didn’t really work. But somewhere, after a few beers, some genius came up with the great idea of simply etching the label on the CD using the laser built into the CD burner. And thus, Lightscribe was created. A ...

Some guy on eBay bought that broken lens off me a few weeks ago. They paid promptly and everything seemed fine, so I boxed up the lens in the original box and shipped it to California. I got an email today saying that they guy went and picked it up from the post office, only to find the box empty. So, somewhere along the way, somebody decided to help themselves. Of course, since the lens was broken, I didn’t add any extra insurance to it. That being said, I think there’s at least $100 included by default. But now I have the hassle of trying to sort all this out and will probably have to refund ...

This is my mac. He’s pretty fun, kind of shinny, not too heavy, and he can nearly last a whole DVD without dying. But when he sleeps, he sometimes doesn’t wake up. When I iPhoto him too hard, sometimes he rebels and he goes to sleep instead. When I photoshop, sometimes he chugs away doing something else, almost like “don’t worry, I’ll get to that eventually.” I put more ram in Mac, hoping to make him happier, but he’s still sad. When he crashes, he does it slowly to rub it in, slowly fading the screen from top to bottom until he’s gone. He used to do this once a month, but ...

Slight change of plans. I was originally going to go to Toronto on the 26th, but I’m going to go to Ottawa the week before for work. So, I’ll be bouncing into Toronto on the 26th, but instead of coming from Vancouver, I’ll be coming in on a flight from Ottawa. That will put me into Toronto several hours earlier, which should take a bit of pressure off with having to get downtown from the airport. I’ll be staying out in Kanata in a really great hotel called The Brookstreet Hotel, which just happens to be owned by Terry Matthews (whose company recently merged with ours). Apparently Terry ...

Today I made the long trek to work, but instead of having my head down with my iPod firmly attached, I decided (mainly because my iPod was dead) to keep my head up and look around. Being a single guy, my gaze routinely fell on cute girls and, to my complete disappointment, nearly all of them had a cigarette firmly attached between their fingers. Photo by Liz Kasameyer on Flickr Now for some reason, I always thought Vancouver was a fairly healthy city. When I moved away in 2000, I don’t think a single person I knew smoked. And now, coming back, everywhere I look there are people who are puffing ...