life in general

well, working on too many projects. It’s been a while since I posted on my wordpress blog. See my flickr stream for projects… finished an altered book project. titled “broken dreaming”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalec/sets/72157626914933889/

other than that, and sorting thru photos, life has been going on..

Heart in mouth

Update on my day In St Albert. The day started out fine, packed up my gear, made sure we had sunscreen, deet, and all the filters for the camera ready. Went out to breakfast at smittys in st Albert. Finished eating and set up the camera, got the filters on packed it into my handy easy access backpack, and slung it over my shoulder. We had a wander through the local mall, that looks a bit run down and empty, mind it was early on a Saturday. Just to be sure I wouldn’t have issues at the event I wandered in for a bathroom break (having issues with port a potties at 35C) coming out of the bathroom stall i slung my backpack and it was then i discovered that I hadn’t zippered up the side pocket as carefully as i thought, because my camera went flying out and skidding across the tile floor. The expression heart in mouth so definitely applies, as I saw my baby bouncing and coming to a stop, almost in matrix slow motion. Hands shaking I knelt down, and carefully picked her up…. looked all over, not seeing any obvious dents or scratches……. and packed her up more carefully….. went out hands shaking to see she who had been waiting. She who had been waiting didn’t quite understand how upset and white I was until I explained.. Well I sat down in the food court and checked out the baby.. who didn’t seem worse for wear, I did get an error message to make sure the lens was attached properly, that cleared up when I detached and reattached it. So with heart pounding and a sick feeling I went off to the event…..I think disaster was averted because I had the small lens on, and the lens hood seemed to have taken the initial hit..  and it was glancing and  on slippery tiles..
After the near disaster we headed off the to the rocknaugust event…..check out my flickr stream to see if being under duress helped or hurt…

Random Thoughts

Why Edmonton?  Why thunderstorms?  Why Mosquitoes?  Why country music? At least country music that wasn’t performed by Johnny Cash.   Sitting here on another hot and muggy and humid Friday night, listening to some good tunes, and sipping a fine beverage. Contemplation about things being a peculiar habit, I cast aside doubt angst and worry, stop thinking why oh why didn’t I buy that friday night lottery ticket, after all it could have been a winner.

But seriously, tomorrow’s plans, to be up early, make coffee, get my stuff together and head off to the St Albert for the Rockin August Show and shine, to practice  the art of taking fragments of cars while in the middle of a crowd of people.   I am prepared, I have a shiny polarizing filter to deal with the glare from the summer sun, and I have my monopod armed and ready to steady my hand, and I have a supply of band aids for the skinned knees I will likely get from scraping them on pavement getting odd angles of cars.

( http://www.rocknaugust.com/2010_events.html )

Update on todays activities, I spent 4 1/2 hours today helping a friend set up wordpress, flickr, twitter, and tweetdeck.  The process is ongoing, it is amazing how many times you have to enter your personal profile information if you are using all of those services.  I use all of them, but realized that I set them up one at a time over a period of over 2 years, so it didn’t seem intrusive. Weird how intrusive it felt by the 4th time repeating each personal profile..    After that I headed to Earls for much needed bevvie and a pound ( felt like 1/2) of their most excellent wings.

Lastly, I’m having issues getting my profile picture show up on the right of the wordpress screen. Computer, server gremlins I suspect.  dammit!   Update: 2010 August 7 at 0800 am.  Whew, that technical issue  resolved itself without me doing anything more than bang my head on the keyboard in sacrifice to the computing gods…..

Friday-random musings.

Here it is Friday, and so far today I’ve made coffee, showered, drove downtown to a derm appointment, driven home, tried a few alley flower photo’s while struggling with metering in the camera, given up gone in,  vacuumed, scrubbed a toilet, and looked thru a ton of wordpress themes.  I’m also going to help out a friend get set up on wordpress.  All of this whilst twittering, listening to music, and sipping coffee..  is there such a thing as too much multi tasking????

Photo Safari Survivor.

I survived a photo safari at the old gainers site.  (for info on the gainers site, its the site of peter pocklingtons first defeat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pocklington )

Its located at fort road and 62 just off fort road in Edmonton, Alberta. For anyone who doesn’t live near here, there is an enigmatic chimney that sits in the middle of the site, and the transit alrt goes right by the lot.  I’ve been wanting to do a walkabout there since I moved to the north side of edmonton two years ago.  I arrived at a small parking lot to the east side, hosed myself down with deet, and journeyed forth. It is overgrown, with thistles and other wildflowers with weird concrete flooring and other debris randomly distributed around the lot.  It was a bit dangerous underfoot near the chimney with broken  bricks and rubble.  Hopefully the photographs were worth it.

see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalec/sets/72157624656736220/

World Wide Photo Walk

Last Saturday, I participated in the N.A.P.P. ( http://www.photoshopuser.com/)  organized world wide photo walk.  It was overall an interesting day, but  for a while it seemed like the world was conspiring against  us in getting there. First,  my ever faithful, never fails me 97 jeep tj, refused to start, creating sizzling, shorting noises, of the kind that guarantees that this will be an expensive repair.  Next the commuter beater, Reliant K car, didn’t want to start either, but finally did. So we sputtered and stuttered our way down to the meet up point at Louise McKinney Park, by the Chinese pagoda, in the beautiful river valley area of Edmonton.    We were fortunately not late, and slowly the gaggle of photogs gathered, and we were off!

(Photo links to be added as soon as I sort thru the 400 images I took. So far so good, I have it down to 70 sorted images.)

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Trying new things

Decided I will be taking my photo, art hobby to a new level.. I’ve printed and mounted a few of my images, onto canvas, and will be selling them either through friends, or through any gallery contact friends can supply me with.   Initial offering for each 11×14 mounted print will be $150 canadian.   This is a new venture for me.  Initial mounted images from this set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalec/sets/72157624264337903/

contact info:  northernartlight@gmail.com

Readin, Lernin, and distractions

just picked up WordPress for Dummies by  Lisa Sabin-Wilson of http://justagirlintheworld.com/ because of good reviews on line, and to be honest because it was cheaper, than the more advanced book sitting beside it.    So far I’ve discovered a some features of the dashboard that I wasn’t aware of, tweaked my profile, and i’m only up to page 63.  Not because its a difficult read, mostly because I’m a victim of too much multi tasking.  Attempting to read, follow along with the book, listen to a live conference on line #govcamp at:,(http://govcamp.eventbrite.com/) and keep up on twitter all at the same time.. note to self..  turn OFF at least one of those things if I want to be productive.

Winter/Spring of mild discontent

Just realized when I went to comment on another blog, that I’ve been letting my blog go stale. I haven’t posted since November.  It’s been an interesting winter, our weather here in beautiful Edmonton has been weirdly mild (for Edmonton)  this winter.  I  don’t have a lot of excuses for not posting on the blog, except for a  home improvement and computer game ennui.  Looking out the window now at the sunshine, and melting snow, and watching winter olympic coverage, makes me nostalgic for Vancouver, funny in my life I’ve missed the biggest events in Vancouver, I managed to miss Expo, and now the Olympics,  even though in this case the best view of all the events is on the television.  In both cases I was here in Edmonton.

Trying to explain to Vancouver people why I live here, why I would leave the mountains, the ocean, and the mild weather for Edmonton? Edmonton is an amazingly friendly place, it has the largest river valley park in Canada running right through the middle of town, I can be anywhere in town, even during rush hour in under an hour, and since I arrived I have made more friends in 3 years than I made in 20 years in the lower mainland.

It was a bit of a political culture shock, after 20 years of being in a province where the liberals are considered right-wing, and where I would have considered myself to be only slightly left of centre politically.  To here where apparently I’m only slightly to the right of che Guevara.   My observation politically, is this is a province in dire need of  middle of the road political voices in the Alberta Leg…   sadly the only alternate credible alternate voice seems to be the wildrose party, with its even more right-wing agendas.

Now,  after my brief political moment, I have a ton of backlogged photographs that are sitting in lightroom waiting to be processed, and my post olympic pledge is to get them all up on flickr, along with working on several drawing/paintings in progress.

murmle murmle murmle

pretty much over da flue… yep wondering how to clean my chimeny.