Categories: Top :: June 2005

Events: The Toronto 'One of a Kind' show
Fri, 01 Dec 2006

I've no time for a comprehensive review or the like, but I thought I would say a few words in case it would help anyone make up their mind on attending or not. Its running for the last few days and over the weekend on the CNE grounds.

The OoaK show is akin to an organized flea-market.. row upon row (upon row..) of booths for artists, crafters and odds-and-enders to sell their wares. If you've ever been the Canadian National Exhibition and wandered into the International Buildings sales section, you'll know the drill -- enormous and full of neat stuff, though this time of year its geared towards Christmas gifts and knick-knacks. Really, there were so many booths up that I am glad each specialized to one kind of ware, so that you could cruise on by and have a chance of knowing what they were up to without slowing.

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Daily: Life, Being Frazzled, and, Yes - I Really Did Make an Inukshuk from Jam
Tue, 01 Nov 2005

(Awhile back I mentioned the idea of making an Inukshuk out of jam packets. It had occurred to me one morning while sitting in a a breakfast-jernt, that the jam and peanut-butter packets looked like excellent building blocks. As every geek knows, anything that can be built with must be built with, so I began trying to construct various things, but it turns out the packets are badly weighted and too slippery to produce useful things. Still...)

From the too-stressed-and-fealing-tightness-in-the-chest department. Er, wait, thats.. from the whining department :)

I've not posted much in the last week or two .. its just been too nuts. I realize now that one of the great dangers of being too busy (or being burnt-out again?) is that the more wiped out you are, the less tasks you can handle concurrently. Normally we can all handle all manner of simultaneous jobs - having to book appointments, working insanely, preparing dinner, washing laundry and dishes, and still designing some complex new code in our head - but toss in day after long day of such things with high intensity and not enough sleep - Boom! - Instead of being able to juggle dozens of things at once you're frazzled with just a couple of things. Worst of all, the little things that'd never phase you before - the grit in the oil - are suddenly stressing you out and leading you to annoy everyone around you.

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Events: Happy Independence Day, U.S. of A.!
Mon, 04 Jul 2005

Time is tight but I still wanted to extend a warm one to our friends down stairs (though I'll try not to turn this blog into a Happy-<blank>-day site any more than it has been the last few days.. when are UK and Russia up? :) I've been busting my chops of late to get a new Shadow Plan public beta out the door, so I figured today was as good as any day .. wave the flag and pop out a new public release. Not bad for a mornings work :)

Checking the news sites, I'm reminded of a very cool thing I completely forgot about -- NASA's project to smack a probe into an asteroid and see what falls out. This has to be the first deliberate collision, and probably the first photos of an explosion-on-another-body we've got. CNN has a story here

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Events: Niagara Falls, the Ribfest, and assorted shameful hedonism while the world seeks help for Africa via Live8
Sun, 03 Jul 2005

We took a day trip out to Niagara Falls to enjoy some time away from chores, enjoy Canada Day and taste some really excellent pizza. The city, once the so-called honeymoon capitol of Canada, is really Ontario's private little imitation of Las Vegas - including the casinos and dorky souvenir shops but excluding the sin :) And yeah, it has The Falls of course! I must admit that although everyone I know has seen the falls dozens of times, the falls (there are multiple clustered together) really are spectacular to see each round and the surrounding area is gorgeous for biking, wandering around, wine tasting or eating fudge while attending wax museums highlighting well known murderers.

(The Ribfest we encountered back in Toronto, though they're popping up all over the place; theres another in Mississauga in a few weeks so we may have to attend there too.. see if you can find one in your location :)

(And since tomorrow is my brother's birthday .. Happy Birthday Punk!)

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Events: Happy Birthday Canada!
Sat, 02 Jul 2005

July 1st is Canada Day, our national holiday (where everyone finally gets a day off work to shoot off fireworks) We managed to run around a bit in Niagara (the Canadian side) and I've some rediculous photos, but I'll blog those events separately :) Instead, I thought I'd dig through my history memories a little -- I've always been a big fan of learning some history but never had the time to read up too much beyond what was gleaned back in school. (A priority problem perhaps .. but after work its tough to curl up with a history textbook over some fast moving fiction, don't you think?)

Photo: A barn in northern Alberta shows off its Canadian colours. (Photo by Peter McCluskey/CBC.CA). Not used with permission, but swiped from here

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Events: Father's Day 2005
Mon, 20 Jun 2005

Fathers Day came and went yesterday, and I'm glad I got out to see my parents. They live in another city an hours drive away - which isn't too far, but its far enough they don't pop by here so often, and far enough we don't pop by their place enough (except when I head out to the dentist, since I continue to visit the same practitioner I've been going to since I was a human..) I find it a little surreal dropping by the old haunt -- since we go a few times a year we get snapshot updates to our brains of the city, like a really low framerate movie played back slowly enough so you can witness individual frames clicking by. All we need to do is wear sunglasses tinted to sepia-tone :) You see a car-wash pop up here, a sub-shop vanish there, and slowly the places you used to run around in 30 years earlier turn into laundry-mats or new homes. But I'll always miss the area -- my smaller home town -- as you'll never know a place as well as the one in which you grew upm since you did all your thorough investigation and adventuring during your summer holidays from school. When've grown up and moved you've really made yourself a stranger to your new location (or at least to its low level details) since only a child can really know the small things.

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