Penmachine

Today was the 2010 Vancouver Camera Show, held by the Western Canada Photographic Historical Association at the Cameron Rec Centre in Burnaby, near Lougheed Mall. I wasn't planning to go, but it turned out that my daughter Marina's new lenses for her glasses, which we got yesterday, were flawed, and needed to be replaced by the optician at that mall, so the two of us were in the area and had some time to kill.

Marina was enthusiastic—she was interested in looking at old Polaroid cameras and to see what the event was like. We walked from the mall, and I paid my $5 admission. (Marina was free.) And wow, it's a heck of an event.

The rec centre gym was filled with dozens of tables with thousands of items of photographic and movie equipment, most of it of some vintage, like the Nikon FE I bought the other day (or a bit newer, or a lot older). Cameras, lenses, flashes, tripods, bellows, enlargers, filters, parts—a photo geek's dream.

It was still very busy, even though we were there barely an hour before closing time. The crowd skews heavily male, and older, but Marina and I had fun poking around at the various obscurities, most in black and chrome, or maybe even leather. I didn't bring much money, nor did we buy anything, yet we hardly noticed the time pass before her glasses were ready and we had to leave. I didn't even take any pictures!

I'll plan to attend again next year, if I'm healthy, and to go earlier. Both Marina and her sister might like to come along, if their photographic interest persists until 2011. Honestly, if I'd gone myself, I probably could have browsed all day. But like a gambler, I'd have to bring cash in advance and set myself a hard limit.

Labels: conferences, family, geekery, meetup, photography, vancouver

On Saturday, April 17, 1965, my parents were married in St. Andrews Wesley Church on Burrard Street in downtown Vancouver. They held their reception that evening, in a building constructed as the Stanley Park Sports Pavilion in 1930. Today it's the home of the Fish House restaurant.

Last night, 45 years later, also on a Saturday, they returned to the Fish House for an anniversary dinner:

My wife Air, our daughter Marina, and I were happy to join them. (Our younger daughter was at a friend's birthday sleepover.)

I haven't been to the Fish House in at least 15 years, but I won't wait that long again. The food was great—with the added benefit of legacy dishes imported from Vancouver's legendary and recently-closed seaside restaurant, the Cannery. The salmon, prawns, and scallops I ate were excellent, but the rare tuna steak that Air ordered (and which she let me try) was extraordinary.

In August, Air and I will mark 15 years since our wedding in 1995. I hope we can make it to 45, however unlikely my health makes that seem right now. In the meantime, happy anniversary, Mom and Dad. Thanks for inviting us along.

P.S. Here were my parents later in 1965, in Berlin, on their honeymoon:

Labels: anniversary, family, food, restaurant, review, vancouver

I can almost see the place where my daughter Marina slept last night, and will again tonight. But not quite. She and her school classmates in grades 6 and 7 are at Camp Jubilee for a two-night, three-day outdoor education adventure.

The camp sits near the tiny shoreline community of Frames Landing (which I'd never heard of until I looked it up just now) on the west shore of Indian Arm, the fjord whose mountain boundaries I can see from my front window. But those mountains are so steep and packed together that, though the camp is closer to our house than the ski slopes of Grouse Mountain that we can see clearly every day, it is entirely hidden behind several tree-coated ridges.

The only way to reach Camp Jubilee (or the homes at Frames Landing) is by boat. The camp has one to ferry visitors back and forth from Deep Cove, the urban harbour about 15 minutes to the south that is the easternmost part of North Vancouver. The kids have been incredibly lucky this week: the weather has been sunny and unusually warm, and looks to remain so through tomorrow when they come back.

I'm sure they've had a great time, and Marina will be pooped when I pick her up at school in the afternoon. Her younger sister will be returning from her own day trip with her classmates snowshoeing on Grouse Mountain. I expect they'll be a couple of sleepy girls come Friday night.

Labels: environment, family, school, vancouver

A desiccated fruit husk, about 5 cm long, sat delicately on a nearby lawn this afternoon. I spotted it while walking the dog:

Did dry out like that naturally? I've seen similar veins-only leaf skeletons around, but this seems much more fragile:

I wonder what kind of fruit it was, and how it got there.

Labels: biology, photography, vancouver

Reilly made a movie of the party we went to on the weekend:

You might recall another one of his videos I posted a couple of weeks ago.

Labels: birth, friends, geekery, movie, party, photography, vancouver, video

It's Spring now, and in Vancouver, it feels like it:

In part to celebrate, Air and I went to a party last night, where everyone dressed up. We also got some of my favourite photos ever of us. Here's one with a cat, a young princess (who left early), me (in fedora), Air (pink hair), and our pal Catherine, who had the evening's best hat:

Thanks to Reilly and happy 30th birthday to Miranda, who were our hosts. I have my next bout of chemo tomorrow, so it was good to do something fun while I could.

And didn't my wife look fabulously hot?

Especially with the martini and the bubble chair. It was like 1968, baby! Except with iPhones.

Labels: birthday, friends, party, photography, vancouver, weather

After high school, there are any number of specialized programs you can follow that have an obvious result: training as an electrician, construction worker, chef, mechanic, dental hygienist, and so on; law school, medical school, architecture school, teacher college, engineering, library studies, counselling psychology, and other dedicated fields of study at university; and many others.

But I don't think most people who get a high school diploma really know very well what they want to do after that. I certainly didn't. And it's just as well.

At the turn of the 1990s, I spent two years as student-elected representative to the Board of Governors of the University of British Columbia, which let me get to know some fairly high mucky-muck types in B.C., including judges, business tycoons, former politicians, honourees of the Order of Canada, and of course high-ranking academics. One of those was the President of UBC at the time, Dr. David Strangway.

In the early '70s, before becoming an academic administrator, he had been Chief of the Geophysics Branch for NASA during the Apollo missions—he was the guy in charge of the geophysical studies U.S. astronauts performed on the Moon, and the rocks they brought back. And Dr. Strangway told me something important, which I've remembered ever since and have repeated to many people over the past couple of decades.

That is, when he got his physics and biology degree in 1956 (a year before Sputnik), no one seriously thought we'd be going to the Moon. Certainly not within 15 years, or probably anytime within Strangway's career as a geophysicist. So, he said to me, when he was in school, he could not possibly have known what his job would be, because NASA, and the entire human space program, didn't exist yet.

In a much less grandiose and important fashion, my experience proved him right. Here I am writing for the Web (for free in this case), and that's also what I've been doing for a living, more or less, since around 1997. Yet when I got my university degree (in marine biology, by the way) in 1990, the Web hadn't been invented. I saw writing and editing in my future, sure, since it had been—and remains—one of my main hobbies, but how could I know I'd be a web guy when there was no Web?

The best education prepares you for careers and avocations that don't yet exist, and perhaps haven't been conceived by anyone. Because of Dr. Strangway's story, and my own, I've always told people, and advised my daughters, to study what they find interesting, whatever they feel compelled to work hard at. They may not end up in that field—I'm no marine biologist—but they might also be ready for something entirely new.

They might even be the ones to create those new things to start with.

Labels: biology, education, memories, moon, school, science, vancouver, work

I'm just emerging from another few days of post-chemotherapy haze, but this morning was an interesting way to emerge.

After many a joke during the Winter Olympics about how there was no snow here in Vancouver in February, we actually got our first proper dump of snow—less than two weeks before the start of spring. My daughter Marina photographed it.

Of course, since we're in Vancouver, it has almost all melted now in the rain. That's okay. Like most of us, I remember last year.

P.S. Marina and her sister set up a fashion design blog yesterday. It's pretty cool—especially since they required no grown-up assistance at all, as far as I know.

Labels: chemotherapy, snow, vancouver, weather

Our friends Miranda and Reilly had going-away party last night for Tanya, who's moving to Calgary with her fiancé Barry. Reilly made a video:

Interestingly, he used a digital still camera. Not even the movie mode on a still camera, but the super-high-speed burst shooting mode of his top-of-the-line Canon EOS-1D Mark IV digital SLR, which can fire away at up to 10 frames per second. (Miranda and Reilly are the kind of people who are supposed to have expensive cameras. They're wedding photographers, and very good ones.)

The final video, compiled from over 5000 individual photographs, is arty, and a bit strange. My wife Air and I are in it, mostly in the background, but we're featured about four and a half minutes in, just as we were leaving. I'm Mr. Handshaking-Guy-in-a-Hat.

Labels: friends, geekery, movie, party, photography, vancouver, video

...until the end part.

I wanted to like the whole thing, I really did. I've turned into a total Winter Olympics fanboy in the past two weeks, and I watched it on TV and made my way to several of the Olympic sites. I cheered and cursed and got myself in knots over curling (curling?!) and snowboard cross and hockey and bobsleigh and speed skating, and even events where Canada wasn't in the medal running, like the men's 4x10 cross-country ski relay.

First, let me note that the Derek Miller playing guitar and singing with Eva Avila and Nikki Yanofsky early on was not me, though since the camera angle was pretty wide, I probably could have gotten some good mileage from pretending he was. But no, he's won Juno awards and is way more talented than I am.

Anyway, watching the Closing Ceremony on TV today with my family, I liked its tone, happy and respectful when it needed to be, delightfully cheeky beyond that:

• The "repair" of the cauldron that malfunctioned at the Opening Ceremony, with Catriona Le May Doan on hand to relight it (she missed out on her earlier chance because of the snafu).
• The informal, casual return of the visibly relieved and tired athletes to the stadium—in a loose, milling throng instead of the regimented blocs of nations from the also-lovely Opening Ceremony a couple of weeks ago.
• The beautiful seaside figure skating piped in from Sochi, Russia as part of their feature during the event.
• The spontaneous (and lengthy) standing ovation after Vancouver chief organizer John Furlong's brief but apt tribute to dead Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili.
• William Shatner's Canadian semi-slam poem. I mean, come on, The Shat, my friends! People joked about the idea online beforehand, and then IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED! Awesome. (I just wished they'd beamed him up at the end. After all, Scotty was from Vancouver, you know.)
• The whole every-Canadian-stereotype-and-the-kitchen-sink production number with Michael Bublé. Loved when the Mountie-ettes tore off his Red Serge uniform, when the giant inflatable beavers appeared, when the hockey players broke into a brawl. I'm not sure everyone around the world got the intended irony, but I don't care. It was hilarious.

Alas, the musical cavalcade during the finale was a disappointment. There is so much more diversity, talent, and power across the Canadian music scene, and much of it was on hand for the free LiveCity concerts during the course of the Games.

But not at the Closing Ceremony. Neil Young played "Long May You Run" as the flame was extinguished. Good job. k-os finished the evening with some of his distinctive and rousing hip-hop. Also good. In between, we got Nickelback, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morissette, Simple Plan, Hedley, and Marie-Mai. All very mainstream, white, big-selling pop acts.

None of those acts, on their own, was particularly problematic. (Lots of people have a hate on for Nickelback, sure, but like the absent Céline Dion, they sell the records). However, all of them together reflected a profound lack of imagination.

The reaction among Canadians online, which had been mixed before that point, turned savage. Steven Page, former singer of the Barenaked Ladies (he or his old band should have been there), got in some of the best digs:

• "It's easy to make fun of Nickelback, but there are worse things. And Chad's hair looks nice. Like Katie Couric's."
• "I have nothing to say about Avril. Except I wish it was Anvil."
• "Wow. If I just arrived on Earth now, I'd believe that sports were better than music."

Entertainment Weekly piped up with, "Where is Rush? Be cool or be cast out, Canada..." Comments from my friends and other rank-and-file Twitter and Facebook users were less kind. At the end, my friend Ryan pointed me to Parveen Kaler, who summed it up with this:

• "FREE BIRD."

Think about some of the other options: Sloan, Blue Rodeo, Spirit of the West, Stompin' Tom Connors, Arcade Fire, Jessie Farrell, Tegan and Sara, Matthew Good, Alexisonfire, Bruce Cockburn, Hot Hot Heat, K'Naan, The Trews, Paul Anka, D.O.A., Mother Mother, Skydiggers, Lights, Sarah Harmer, Robbie Robertson, Metric, Diana Krall, The Tragically Hip, Bedoin Soundclash, Jann Arden, The Guess Who, Divine Brown, Odds (with my friend and sometime co-musician Doug on bass), The Stills, 54-40, Sam Roberts, Cowboy Junkies, Colin James, Great Big Sea, Bif Naked, Wide Mouth Mason, The New Pornographers, Shania Twain, Feist, and I could go on. Wouldn't it have been nice to see some of them in the mix?

I'm not even including French Quebec, jazz, country, blues, metal, R&B, folk, reggae, bhangra, and hip-hop artists I don't know much about. Doubtless there's a huge list there too.

So, as with its opening counterpart, I loved the ceremony part of the Olympic Closing Ceremony, and all the staff and volunteers did great work bringing it together. For this fan of Canadian music, alas, its musical finale felt like a fizzle.

Fortunately, the two-week-long street party that several parts of Vancouver have become continues, especially after the big hockey gold medal yesterday afternoon. I bet some of those revelers are singing Nickelback songs too.

Labels: band, controversy, music, olympics, sports, television, vancouver

I asked this on Facebook already, but I'm still wondering. Curling seems to be the Winter Olympic discipline with the longest event time (matches can last for hours), but which event is the shortest? Moguls, snowboard halfpipe, and freestyle aerials seem to be candidates (tens of seconds per run)—anyone know which takes the shortest-event crown?

Let's ignore sports outside the Winter Olympics: events like the 100-metre dash or diving in the Summer Games are obviously extremely quick, under ten seconds.

Labels: geekery, olympics, sports, vancouver

Many Olympic victories are won by the slimmest of margins. For example, today, Canada's Christine Nesbitt garnered a gold medal in speed skating by 1/50th of a second, while traveling as fast as a car.

But then there are those athletes who so dominate their runs that they're almost in a different race. Maëlle Ricker did that in her gold-medal snowboard cross event a couple of days ago, opening up a huge lead within the first five seconds and disappearing beyond the other riders' horizon shortly after.

Photo by Gaeia

China's Wang Meng performed a similar feat in short-track speed skating, setting an Olympic record and leaving her rivals, including eventual silver medalist Mariane St-Gelais of Canada, to battle for the other two medals.

Photo by Harrison Ha

And of course there's Shaun White, the American snowboarder who already had the halfpipe gold medal sewn up, but used his second run to annihilate any prospect of competition from other riders. I was at the Irish House pavilion in downtown Vancouver when his run appeared on the big screen, and you could see jaws drop across the huge room. I don't know much about snowboarding, but even I knew that his near-impossible tricks meant no one could touch him.

Photo by Lee LeFever

The Olympics often seems like a huge circus of media and entertainment and money and megaproject building. It can obscure the actual sports. But when you witness the achievements of truly outstanding individuals, you remember, and you have to admire what they can make the human body do.

Labels: olympics, sports, vancouver

Today, while the kids were at school, and after I had another one of my chemotherapy-induced random barfs at home, I took the SkyTrain into downtown Vancouver to check out the Winter Olympics vibe. And what a vibe it was.

I walked from Science World (currently the Russian Pavilion) past the various provincial pavilions, up the downtown escarpment, along Georgia Street, to Robson Square, then down to Canada Place and the Olympic Cauldron on Coal Harbour. On the way I ate at the world famous Japadog hot dog cart for the first time (yes, even for a native Vancouverite!), and before I came home I had a coffee at the very civilized Cascades Lounge in the Pan Pacific Hotel.

I've lived my whole 40 years in Vancouver, and I have never seen it like it is this week. Even during Expo 86 (check this throwback I spotted), the crowds and events were largely confined to the Expo site on False Creek, while the Olympics—aside from being more intensely focused by being two weeks instead of five months long—permeate the downtown core, as well as extending elsewhere in Greater Vancouver and up to Whistler. But we are a more global, better-known city than we were 24 years ago too.

There are seas of people young and old downtown, night and day. Many are dressed in Canadian red, but others are sporting colours and languages from many other nations. Way out from downtown, at Metrotown near my house, the mall is full of Russians. There are flat-screen TVs all over the place showing live and repeat Olympic competitions.

I returned home, exhausted, to walk the dog, meet the kids on their way home from school, and then soak my feet. I didn't go inside any pavilions or Olympic attractions, and I hardly spoke to anyone. A number of my friends had been in the downtown area, but were busy at press conferences and other official events, and I was happy to go it alone, to get a sense of how downtown is transformed.

It is an odd thing, for a sporting event to energize my still-young, laid-back hometown. I expect something similar will happen when the next Winter Olympics come to Sochi, Russia in 2014. While almost the same age as Vancouver, Sochi is smaller and certainly less familiar to the rest of the world. It also has many palm trees—perhaps a first for a Winter Games host city? It may be unusually warm here for February, but it's not that warm.

Labels: food, olympics, sports, vancouver, whistler

Tonight's Winter Olympics opening ceremony was impressive, if often a bit phallic. There was one technical glitch with the hydraulics for the first, indoor cauldron in B.C. Place Stadium, but the ceremony did the most important thing right.

That was to remember Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died this morning in a terrifying crash during a training run on the Whistler luge track, at the age of 21. (He was born the year the Winter Olympics were last in Canada, in Calgary in 1988.) He was the fourth athlete to die during a sporting event at the Winter Games since they began in 1924.

Jacques Rogge, the head of the International Olympic Committee, pre-empted his prepared remarks with a memorial to Kumaritashvili. Vancouver head organizer John Furlong also included the late athlete in his speech. There was a minute of silence during the ceremony, and a standing ovation for the remaining members of the small Georgian team, walking sadly wearing black armbands.

And the bonus? Instead of the rumoured Celine Dion, we got a spectacular k.d. lang. Good choice.

Labels: death, music, olympics, sports, television, vancouver

Today I heard something I've never heard before: "your tumours have shrunk." Through all the many different varieties of chemotherapy and radiation and immunotherapy and experimental Phase 1 drug trials I've put myself under during the past three years, only surgery has ever knocked my cancer back. Everything else, at best, kept it at bay.

Until now. Of course this is good news—but that's all relative. The tumours I showed you back in September are still pretty big, but they are measurably smaller than they were in November. And that includes the new ones that had just appeared in the fall. So I still have cancer, a lot of it all over the inside of my chest, but just a little less of it than I did a couple of months ago. As I wrote to some friends, I'm not out of the woods, but at least I'm no longer sinking slowly into quicksand either.

Thus, this afternoon on the way out of the cancer clinic, my wife Air and I smiled a little, held hands, and bought some flowers to put in the house in celebration. Later on we had takeout sushi with the kids. And tomorrow I go back in for more chemotherapy, which I hope will continue to beat the shit out of those metastatic growths.

So I'll be a sleepy, nauseated lump of crap for the next three or four days. A bit of good news doesn't suddenly make things go easily, you see.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, love, news, vancouver

I like the Olympics, but I have to say the Flickr photo set where Quatchi the 2010 mascot tours Vancouver's poor Downtown East Side neighbourhood is clever and to the point:

Quick PR tip to the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee: trying to shut this piece of satire down as trademark infringement or something would probably be a bad idea.

I'm off to chemotherapy this morning, so don't expect much in the way of blog posts and such for three or four days while I sleep it off. Actually, it turns out my chemo is postponed a week: my neutrophil, platelet, and hemoglobin levels are borderline, so I need to recover more. Yay for no nausea for now; boo for offsetting plans we've made this month and in February based on my previous chemo schedule.

Labels: humour, olympics, photography, poverty, vancouver

Last year, Old Navy tried making some unofficial Olympic clothing, but Vancouver's Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and the International Olympic Committee shut that down because the jackets were too close to official trademarks for the upcoming Winter Olympics.

Now Vancouver yoga retailer Lululemon has tried a cheekier approach, releasing a line of clothes pushing the line of Olympic trademark infringement, without quite crossing it. The line is called the "Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 & 2011 Edition," which gave me a laugh.

I like the sporting events of the Winter Olympics, but VANOC and the IOC have been overzealous in emphasizing the business aspects of the event, rather than the sport. So I appreciate Lululemon's retail satire. The stuff looks good too, so I might buy some.

I wonder if it will be hard to get into Olympic events wearing the Lululemon clothes in February?

Labels: canada, clothing, controversy, money, olympics, politics, shopping, vancouver

(Cross-posted from Buzz Bishop's DadCAMP.)

Back in the mid-1970s when I grew up in Vancouver, almost all the stores were closed on Sundays, because of a piece of legislation called the Lord's Day Act. Every day before class in elementary school, we said the Lord's Prayer. These were vestiges of a general assumption, made since British Columbia was colonized a century earlier: even if everyone in B.C. wasn't Christian, the province would still run as if they were.

But Metro Vancouver has become remarkably secular in the three decades since then. In the 2001 Census, 40% of the population identified itself as having "no religious affiliation," and the proportion is probably even bigger now. (That's two and a half times the average across Canada.) My wife and I fit the trend: we have raised our two daughters, ages 9 and 11, in a non-religious household. Like us, few of our friends attend a mosque, temple, or church.

Buzz asked me to write this post because he saw that I just joined the Facebook group for Parenting Beyond Belief, a website run by Dale McGowan from Atlanta, Georgia. I signed up not because I needed much advice about raising children without religion (something many of us now do, especially in Vancouver), but to note publicly that it's been the approach in my family since our kids were born.

[Read more at dad-camp.com...]

Labels: canada, family, history, religion, vancouver, web

When I interviewed CBC Radio producer Paolo Pietropaolo back in January on the Inside Home Recording podcast, he talked about his upcoming documentary on the Salish Sea here in British Columbia.

The original version appeared in the spring, and a documentary edition was broadcast this morning on the Canada-wide radio show "The Current." You can listen to both. They might work best in headphones, even though they weren't broadcast in stereo.

Labels: canada, cbc, environment, history, oceans, radio, seattle, vancouver

• The rotor on the new Grouse Mountain wind turbine is turning very slowly, first time I've seen it move. Must be testing.
• Notice that when they have all those many layers on, supermodels almost look like normal people?
• Sydney, Australia covered the road of the Harbour Bridge with grass and cows, and 6000 people had a picnic.
• "No child has been poisoned by a stranger's goodies on Halloween, ever, as far as we can determine."
• Brent Simmons on vaccines (via Daring Fireball). I had chicken pox almost as bad, but at 15. My wife Air got shingles in '04. I'm flad the kids will get neither.
• If, like many Canadians, you have a huge voice crush on Nora Young, then this audio from CBC's Spark will slay you.
• Awesome song flowcharts for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Hey Jude."
• Dan Savage is always so cheecky: "I don't believe that couples who make the choice to be monogamous should be discriminated against in any way."
• Archaeology doc "The Link" a few months ago was full of needless hype. Discovery Channel's "Discovering Ardi" shows how it's done properly.
• "I'm all for winging it, but saying 'I'm not really prepared' to an audience shows them the ultimate disrespect."
• Some interesting iPhone photography apps.
• Dark areas on this world map are the most remote from a city. No Antarctica, though.
• A new deal today with the Cowichan band means you'll be able to buy real sweaters at HBC Olympic store.
• Twelve images showing how vastly digital imaging has improved astrophotography on the ground and in space since 1974.
• Seven questions that keep physicists awake at night (still lots to learn, which is great).
• First-ever Lip Gloss and Laptops video podcast (for Halloween).
• American Samoa could have had a tsunami warning system, but funds were frozen in 2007 because of waste and corruption.
• Telus is selling iPhones in Canada Thursday of this week (Nov 5). Pricing is basically the same as Rogers/Fido (no surprise).
• The opposing Canadian "No TV Tax" vs. "Local TV Matters" ads are indistinguishable, obnoxious, and make both sides look like shitheads. Makes me want to go out and get some man-on-the-street interviews. "Excuse me, ma'am, did you know that both the TV networks and the cable companies are wasting money on advertising instead of trying to make better programming, using fake man-on-the-street interviews to try to confuse you about their own pissing contest? What do you think of that?"
• Here's a flu primer. The October 25 edition of CBC's "Cross Country Checkup" (MP3) is also good. Here's a slightly contrary position, and a more general one about the dangers of not vaccinating. Wired also has a cover story on the topic.
• Weird Al's relentless perfectionism in the studio (love when he gets a headache trying to channel Zack de le Rocha).
• As of today it's been 32 years since the last case of smallpox in the world was eliminated by vaccination.
• The 27" iMac has a shockingly low price for what you get - even for the LCD panel alone (via Dave Winer).
• Dave Winer also notes why death of a parent can make you grown up. My parents are alive, and doing great (better than me!).
• I like Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, though I haven't read it yet.
• Two people I know both had cancer surgery the same day, this past Monday.
• Top 10 Internet rules (via Raincoaster).
• $400 is expensive, but if you make serious video with a DSLR, I bet this LCD viewfinder is worth it (via Scott Bourne).
• Having to medivac a sailor from a US Navy submarine to a helicopter offshore is hairy and dangerous business!
• As Paul Thurrott said, people are going to be wandering into Microsoft's new store all the time and asking, "Excuse me, where are the iPods?"
• "If what you're doing does make sense, then, for Christ's sake, talk like a human being."
• From Psychology Today in 2008, ten ways we get the odds wrong on risk.
• You can now buy the whole Abbey Road album for Beatles Rock Band.
• Daughter M just described a fever-induced time dilation hallucination identical to mine from childhood. Never thought anyone would understand!
• Red Javelin Communications is apparently working with my company Navarik, but I'm finding their website rather too buzzwordy for my taste.
• Research in Motion. Oh, what will we do with you and your fine, fine, not-at-all-dirty URL http://rim.jobs?
• A great (much improved) update by Billy Wilson to my very popular "All the Current DLSRs" camera collage.
• Here's a sign of flu in our neighbourhood: our local Shoppers Drug Mart was entirely sold out of hand sanitizer. Both my kids were stricken, but I avoided it.
• Noya sings with my band sometimes. Here's her solo video.
• Another Ralph Lauren Photoshop disaster.
• The Diamond Dave Soundboard is still genius.
• As always, Saturn's rings and moons are some of the strangest and most beautiful things you can see.

Labels: australia, beatles, cbc, environment, evolution, holiday, lipglossandlaptops, microsoft, photography, podcast, sex, vancouver, video

A couple of weeks ago, my wife Air pointed out to me that the sidewalks in front of convenience stores throughout Greater Vancouver have recently sprouted large, inflatable polar bears promoting Klondike ice cream bars:

The Klondike promotions rep was obviously very busy around Vancouver in October. Both Air and I like the inflatable bears—they're cute, and large, and strange. Most effectively, they point out how many independent mom-and-pop style corner stores there still are in this city. I'm often tempted to assume that most have been put out of business by 7-Eleven and gas station shops, but that appears not to be the case.

My set of nine photos above resulted from my simply keeping an eye out for the bears during a couple of car trips on a single day this past week. Most of the pictures are from just one street, the main inter-city artery Kingsway. There must be dozens or hundreds of the beasts throughout the region.

One I didn't manage to snap is probably breaking the rules. On Canada Way, there's an independent Buffalo gas station that has covered the Klondike logo with a sign reading "HAND CAR WASH." That promo rep might be angry if he or she spots it.

Labels: animals, food, humour, shopping, signs, vancouver

When we sold our old laptop recently, we used the money to buy a couple of iPod touches for our kids. I know, we spoil them terribly and all that. Ours is a geek house. Get used to it. (And if you're interested in their old iPod nanos, those are for sale too—let me know.)

Ordering online, I presumed (naively) that while the iPods are of course made in China, there would probably be a North American distribution centre where they are individually laser engraved and then shipped to customers here. But Apple and UPS let you track your order. Ours shipped directly out of China, and the results are a bit depressing.

There's been a lot of hoopla about Apple pulling out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber's poor climate-change policies, Apple's greener laptops made with more recyclable materials, and so on, but I have to wonder whether many of those efforts are being negated by the insanely inefficient transport routes taken by items shipped from the online Apple Store.

Although I ordered two identical devices (with separate custom engraving on the back of each) at the same time, as part of the same order, here's how the two iPods are getting to our house:

• iPod #1: Shanghai, China → Anchorage, Alaska → Louisville, Kentucky → Buffalo, New York → Mount Hope, Ontario → Winnipeg, Manitoba → Calgary, Alberta → Richmond, B.C. → Burnaby, B.C.
• iPod #2: Shanghai, China → Anchorage, Alaska → Louisville, Kentucky → Lachine, Québec → Montréal, Québec → Mount Hope, Ontario → Calgary, Alberta → Richmond, B.C. → Burnaby, B.C

Same order, same type of device, same factory. But apparently, the most cost-effective way to get them to me was to send them together from Shanghai to Anchorage to Louisville, then to separate them, sending one via New York, Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta, and the other via Québec, Ontario, and Alberta. Both passed through Mount Hope and Calgary, but at different times. They're both now in Richmond on the way here to Burnaby, hopefully on the same truck (but I'm not sure of that—see below for an unimpressive update).

It's about 9,000 km direct from Shanghai to Vancouver by plane, but on these routes each iPod has traveled almost twice that far (around 17,000 km) by plane and truck, with takeoffs, landings, and transfers. I know the packages are small, but the price of shipping that way can't possibly be taking into account the relative energetic and environmental costs of the two routes.

Never mind that, by essentially excluding environmental effects, it's less expensive to manufacture the iPods an ocean away to start with. How do these transactions add up, when you multiply them by the millions?

If we're interested in ameliorating climate change, I think that we'll have to address the mismatch between the monetary efficiency and energetic inefficiency of these haphazard transportation methods. But that will likely mean that our gadgets will get more expensive in the short term, in order to make our lives more tolerable in the long term. I have a feeling that, with our generally shortsighted human thinking, we might not be willing to accept that.

And that's a bit of a bummer.

UPDATE 11:30 a.m.: There's something amusing about the situation now. Both iPods arrived at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond before sunrise this morning, after making their way halfway around the world, rapid-fire, in five days. But they've now, apparently, been sitting at YVR, about 12 km away from my house, for three and a half hours without being loaded on a truck, because of "adverse weather conditions." What are those conditions? It's raining a bit. In Vancouver, in the autumn.

FURTHER UPDATE 2:00 p.m.: Delivery. Of one of the iPods. They were both at the airport, both supposedly delayed by weather (though it's sunny now), and one got put on a truck and arrived at the house a few minutes ago. The other one, presumably, is coming on another truck. Point reinforced. Next time I'll buy retail, where I can at least assume that two of the same product from the same batch came to the store in the same vehicle.

FINAL UPDATE 5:00 p.m.: The delay of the second shipment at YVR is a mystery even to the friendly UPS phone rep. It will be delivered tomorrow, taking longer to travel the 12 km from the airport to my house than it did to traverse the 3500 km from Ontario to the West Coast yesterday.

Labels: apple, china, environment, ipod, transportation, vancouver

Dave Winer has posted a bunch of photos from his parents, reaching back more than 50 years. A picture of Vancouver's Coal Harbour from his family trip here in the '60s is fascinating, because here's a similar view today.

Things have changed a little. If you open the two images in separate windows or browser tabs and look carefully, you might be able to spot a couple of the same buildings.

Labels: davewiner, history, photography, vancouver

Vancouver historian Chuck Davis has been writing a series of posts for re:place magazine about the city, summarizing a single year of the city's history each time. The series is called "A Year in Five Minutes," though I think you'd have to read pretty fast to get through each entry in that little time.

He's just reached 1938 and 1939, the years my mother (here in Vancouver) and father (in Berlin) were born, respectively. You can visit the Year in Five Minutes category regularly, or subscribe to the RSS feed for those stories. I'm finding them an enjoyable read. Fellow Vancouverites, former residents, or other B.C. history buffs might too.

Labels: blog, history, vancouver, web

This week I walked around our neighbourhood a bit and took some photos of signs. I'm not much of a typeface nerd, but I did notice something.

Some years ago, when I designed the first version of penmachine.com, I created the logo header using the font Myriad, which I've liked for a long time:

Various weights and styles of Myriad have become my go-to Penmachine fonts, for the cover of my 2005 album, as titles for videos, and so on. When I picked Myriad, I didn't find it too common. But over the past two or three years, it's started showing up more often elsewhere. Here were a couple of examples from my walk:

Myriad is versatile and friendly, so I'm not surprised that I'm seeing it more. Of course, there are also lots of... uh... less elegant choices out there:

If you ever wonder what a particular font is, WhatTheFont.com lets you point to or upload a picture and will try to figure it out automatically for you. It doesn't always work, but especially if you have a clean image, it often does a good job.

Labels: font, geekery, vancouver

UPDATE: As of the beginning of October, the iBook is sold, sorry! Thanks to those who were interested.

Back in 2005 my wife Air bought her first laptop, the excellent workhorse 12-inch iBook G4 (the photo shows her starting it up for the first time back then). She replaced it with a MacBook earlier this year, and we're not using the iBook as much as we thought, so it's time to sell it to someone who'll take good care of it.

We're asking $450 Canadian. Our friends and blog readers get first dibs, and if you're in Greater Vancouver, we'll deliver it or arrange to meet you. If you want a small-size 12" Mac notebook, this is one of the last ones Apple made (with a matte screen, even). Air has been the only owner, and she's treated the iBook very well.

The details: it has a 12" screen (1024x768 resolution), 1.2 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 768 MB RAM, 30 GB hard drive, Combo Drive (CD, DVD, CD-R, CD-RW), AirPort Extreme (Wi-Fi 802.11g) wireless built in, and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, iLife '09, iWork '09 are installed. You get the original iBook install and restore disks, box, packaging, cables, etc., and a new battery.

I just completely restored the software install, so the machine boots up with the Setup Assistant like it's fresh from the factory for you to configure as you like, including all the swoopy Apple multilingual "welcome" space graphics and groovy "do do dee-do do" startup soundtrack. The case, screen, and keyboard are all freshly cleaned. It's white like a kid's teeth before they're old enough to drink Coke, coffee, or red wine.

Email me or contact me via Twitter or Facebook if you'd like to make a good home for this little cutie.

P.S. I think we have a couple of mini-VGA to VGA and mini-VGA to composite video adapters we can throw in too, so you can hook the iBook up to a projector, external monitor, or TV.

Labels: forsale, geekery, macosx, vancouver

I played the gig last night at the tony private Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club, covering percussion, some drumming, background vocals, and (the first time for a performance that long) rhythm guitar. I was a bit of mess—my health was fine, but the three instrumental roles, plus singing, include lots of mental and physical gymnastics, so I usually felt like I was scrambling along a bit behind the others. I did okay, and I had a lot of fun.

It was also the first time this particular band lineup had worked together. We have another show next Saturday, and I expect I'll do a bit better, particularly since I'll improve my sense of what I should play on different songs. I also think a week is about the right amount of recovery time. Thanks to Jeremy, Dave, Rose, Sebastien, and Christian for having me sit in for these two Saturdays. It's been a nice break during my ongoing cancer-treatment nastiness.

Labels: band, cancer, friends, music, vancouver

• Photo sharing site Flickr has these new Gallery things.
• Homemade stratosphere camera rig goes sub-orbital to 93,000 feet (18 miles). Total cost? $150.
• Suw Charman's life is "infested with yetis."
• AIS is the way that commercial ships and boats report their near-coastal positions for navigation. The Live Ships Map uses AIS data to show almost-real-time positions for vessels all around the world. Zoom in and be amazed.
• Strong Bad Email #204 had be laughing uncontrollably. Make sure to click around on the end screen for the easter eggs.
• Julia Child boils up some primordial soup. Really.
• Funky bracelets made from old camera lens housings. Nerdy, yet cool.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 8: most of the cool features, about 85% cheaper than regular Photoshop.
• Vancouver's awesome and inexpensive Argo Cafe finally gets coverage in the New York Times.
• When people ask me to spell a word out loud, I notice that I scrunch up my face while I visualize the letters behind my eyelids.
• Via Jeff Jarvis: in the future, if politicians have nothing embarrassing on the Net, we'll all wonder what it is they're hiding and why they've spent so much effort expunging it.

Labels: cartoon, evolution, flickr, food, linksofinterest, marine, photography, politics, restaurant, science, software, vancouver, web

By mid-September, Vancouver weather has usually shifted to the grey and dreary stereotype we live with much of the year. While we've had a bit of that, this month has exhibited an unusual share of full-on hot summer sunshine, with more looking to come next week. Yesterday, with the kids at school and my wife at work, I found a pleasant spot in a park atop Capitol Hill in Burnaby and watched the clouds go by:

The movie is yet another time-lapse video I assembled using my Nikon D90 and Apple's iMovie software. I was in Harbour View Park, but the foliage is thick enough right now that you can't really see the harbour. It is visible from a couple of nearby streets, however.

Labels: park, sunshine, vancouver, weather

Like other children across the continent, my daughters return to school tomorrow. I'm hoping the school is ready for them.

All during the 2008–2009 school year, construction crews performed a seismic upgrade to the building. The school district set up some portable classrooms on the upper field, and the kids rotated through using them while different classrooms in the structure were rebuilt. By June, the crews seemed to be finishing up, reaching the last class.

But then, over the summer, the building was further gutted, and even this past week there were still heaps of construction materials fenced off in the schoolyard. Old light fixtures littered the grounds and interior, the gym was filled with workers and dust and mess, and there were ominous pits dug here and there.

The men have been working furiously, including Saturdays, to get the school ready for tomorrow's onslaught. I'm sure there was a lot of overtime paid this Labour Day weekend. Yet I'll be interested to find out what state the school is in tomorrow. Maybe they worked some miracles.

Labels: construction, family, holiday, school, vancouver

As we (and many fellow Vancouverites) do every year, my family visited the Pacific National Exhibition yesterday, and had a lot of fun. My kids had already been there with my parents, and we're going again next week, but that didn't stop anyone:

Despite some medication side effects, I even made it through the whole day. I no longer go on the rides myself (I've been prone to barfing from spinny rides for at least 15 years, and the cancer meds certainly don't help), but my wife and kids used their all-day ride passes to full effect.

Labels: family, holiday, photography, playland, vancouver

If you're in the Vancouver area and aren't going to VinoCamp tomorrow afternoon (Saturday the 8th), you could head out to the Blueberry Festival in Cloverdale, which features vintage cars, various activities and entertainments—and the band Heist, with whom I'll be sitting in on drums.

It's the first time in several years I've played with any band except my usual gigs in The Neurotics and HourGlass, but it's the same kind of classic hit rock 'n' roll material, so when we rehearsed on Monday I felt right at home. My old podcast co-host Paul Garay (with whom I've also made some training videos) plays keyboards with the group, and brought me in while their regular drummer is out of town.

We'll be at the Cloverdale Station Pub from noon till 5 p.m. If the weather is decent we'll be outside; if it rains (which it might), then inside. The pub is about 30 minutes east from Vancouver along Highways 1 and 15. I'll even do some singing for you.

Labels: band, music, paulgaray, vancouver

I've lived in Vancouver all my life, and anyone who has knows about Splashdown Park, the most famous of our local waterslide parks, in Tsawwassen (and surely named after the heyday of the space race). I've driven by the place dozens of times on the way to the ferry terminal to Vancouver Island, which is a couple of minutes further down the road. Yet somehow, I'd never been to Splashdown until today.

While it's not quite the heatwave it was last week, today was sunny and warm. My wife Air said she last went as a teenager, but I suspect little has changed about the experience: I'm sure Rock 101 radio was blasting pretty much exactly the same songs (Rush, Ted Nugent, The Doors, Steppenwolf, more Rush) and the seagulls were just as marauding in the 1980s.

It was great, and different from waterslide parks I've been to in Chilliwack, Kelowna (where Alistair got a terrible sunburn a couple of decades ago), and elsewhere. I do regret never visiting the water park that sat behind Coquitlam Centre when I was a kid. It's been gone for years.

You know what's weird about Splashdown Park? The washrooms have water-saving dual flush toilets. Of all places. Is that sort of like a carbon offset?

Labels: family, park, vancouver, weather

The past two days were the hottest ever recorded in Vancouver: over 34°C (94 Fahrenheit) at the airport at sea level, and at least 40°C (104 F) at our house a little bit inland. Since that kind of weather is so unusual in Vancouver, very few people have air conditioning (we don't), and our home was becoming unbearably hot, except for some of the basement. We chose what turned into a wise alternative:

That was the view from the pool deck at the Pan Pacific Hotel in downtown Vancouver, where my wife and I stayed with our two daughters—with full air conditioning—for the past two nights. We returned home (by public transit) this afternoon, after the worst of the heatwave broke, to a house that is now a much more tolerable temperature.

Our tropical fish in the aquarium at home seem to have survived just fine.

Labels: family, travel, vancouver, weather

This is a re-post of the guest entry I wrote for Raul's Blogathon on Saturday.

Here's a story. Two years ago this week, I weighed 145 pounds, about 70 pounds less than I do now. I looked like I'd been in a PoW camp, pale and skeletal. I'd just left St. Paul's Hospital, where I'd been for close to a month after major cancer surgery and an intestinal blockage.

By October I'd gained back 30 of those pounds. Within a year I'd taken a bunch more chemotherapy, lost my hair and grown it back, and had terrible chemo-induced acne. A year after that, the cancer is still here, but I'm fighting it, and I feel pretty good. End of story, for now.

We all grow up making stories—when we're kids, we call it playing, whether it's using an infant mobile or a video camera. And our stories are best when we make them for others, or with them. Unfortunately, many of us become unused to playing, thinking it childish. We grow up terrified of giving speeches, or we write our thoughts only in diaries instead of for reading. We become shy.

For whatever reason, that didn't happen to me. I've been passionate about many things in my 40 years—computers, photography, public speaking, music, making websites, writing and language, science and space, commuting by bicycle, building a life with my wife and family—but when I took at them all, each one is really about making stories for others. Or, as my wife succinctly pointed out, about showing off. I'll admit to that.

Some examples, in no real order:

• Helping put together a school newspaper in sixth grade (or high school, or university).
• Donning a smoking jacket and hand prosthetic to play Captain Hook on the elementary school stage.
• Setting my daughters up with blogs and email addresses before they each turned ten.
• Posting photographs to MacDesktops in the late '90s and photo.net a few years later.
• Playing in a band in crappy bars or luxury New York hotels.
• Editing my high school yearbook (with others) and the UBC student handbook (by myself).
• Teaching courses about Microsoft Word.
• Talking about my cancer on the radio.
• Talking about geeky stuff on TV.
• Recording songs and giving them away for free.
• Helping my wife Air put together her podcast.
• Uploading thousands of pictures and videos to Flickr.
• Crafting obscure technical documents to make them understandable.
• And of course blogging and blogging and blogging for close to nine years.

I've done many of these things for no money (and some for lots of money), but for almost all of them, I wanted other people to know.

Okay, yes, I wanted to show off. Is that healthy?

For me, on balance, I think so. Whether for my jobs or my hobbies, being a ham and wanting others to see and appreciate what I do prods me to make those stories good, and useful. Humans are natural tellers of stories, and we enjoy anything presented in a story-like way. So I've tried to make all of those things in the form of a story. Whether a discussion of evolutionary biology, a fun rockabilly instrumental, a bunch of rants about PowerPoint, or a pretty photograph (or yes, even the instruction manual to install a wireless cellular modem in a police car), I want it to generate a story in your mind.

Stories don't always have an obvious structure. They don't necessarily go in predictable directions, or have a moral or meaning. I certainly didn't see it coming when all this cancer stuff from the past two and a half years happened. But I've been able to make it a story that other people can read, understand, and maybe find helpful. So too with my other passions.

So whatever you're trying to do, whatever hobby or job or habit you have, if you want to share it with others, try to craft it like a story—short or long, visual or auditory, but something that flows. Show it off. That, it seems, is what I like to do.

Derek K. Miller is a writer, editor, web guy, drummer, photographer, and dad. Not in that order. He's been blogging at penmachine.com since 2000, and has been on medical leave from his position as Communications Manager at Navarik Corp. since 2007. His wife and two daughters have put up with his show-offishness way longer than that.

Labels: band, blog, cancer, charity, editing, friends, music, photography, vancouver, writing

We had a bit of a lightning storm in Vancouver tonight, which is unusual around here.

My photo was featured on the website for The Province newspaper this evening too. Thanks to my wife Air for suggesting I send it to them.

UPDATE JULY 26: While my photo above was one of the first posted on Flickr (and on a newspaper website), many other more spectacular shots appeared once people got home from the Celebration of Light fireworks and so on, especially with pictures taken as sunset cast the sky a Martian red. Check out some of the lightning images I found from happygilmore_s_d, drlube, gordzilla68, danfairchildphotography, weaktight, andy6white, another from andy6white, shiftybatter, one more from shiftybatter, cisley, and an extra from cisley, bobbybobbydigi, An Eagle in Your Mind, c-a, lenlangevin, n8brophy, Fleeting Light, uncle_buddha, melodiedawn, treygeiger, cazasco, chrissyshome, mystify, vitrain, kingtoast, and realaworld.

Labels: flickr, news, photography, vancouver, weather

UPDATE 11:50 p.m.: Guest posts for Blogathon on Raul's site by my wife and by me are now online. The Blogathoners have a little over six hours left. Go go go!

Words change. Marathon was originally (and still is) a plain in Greece, but after a battle there between Athenians and Persians in 490 BC, legend says that messenger Pheidippides ran a little over 26 miles to relay the result, and died from heat and exhaustion. More than two thousand years later, his distance was established for races at the Olympics and elsewhere, now called marathons. Deaths, fortunately, are now rare.

Over time, marathon also came to mean anything that took a long time and a lot of effort. After the invention of television, we got the telethon: fundraisers broadcast on TV over many hours or days, focused on a particular charity or cause. Many of us raised in the 1970s don't think of Jerry Lewis as a movie star, but as the guy who ran the telethon.

Now we have blogathon, where numerous bloggers (close to 200 this year from across North America and beyond) post something every half hour for 24 hours. This year's event began at 6 a.m. today, and runs till the same time tomorrow morning. Each participant can choose his or own charity, so there are lots of options. Here in Vancouver, we have quite a few friends doing the blogathon:

• Raul is blogging for the B.C. Cancer Foundation (donate here), and will be publishing guest posts both from my wife and from me later today.
• Rebecca, Jen, Lorraine, Duane, and Beth are also in on the action.
• Numerous others in town, listed on Rebecca's page, are blogathoning today too.

Many of the blogathoners are at Workspace in Gastown today, and I plan to drop in with my kids sometime this afternoon to cheer them on for a bit. Visit their blogs and choose a worthy cause for a donation, why don't you?

Labels: blog, charity, friends, vancouver

I'll be on the radio again, but it's not about cancer this time—I get to nerd out instead! This afternoon, CBC Radio Vancouver's "On the Coast" drivetime show will be talking about the City of New Westminster's feasibility study/pilot project to create a citywide Wi-Fi network (from the May 11 New West council meeting). I'll be on the panel by phone, not in the studio as in the photo.

UPDATE: Audio of my interview is now available at my podcast. You can also grab the MP3 file directly (2.3 MB).

The broadcast panel begins at 5:40 p.m. Pacific Time on 690 FM or 88.1 FM in Vancouver, or you can listen to it online. I'll try to record the stream and post the panel to my podcast shortly. Municipal Wi-Fi was a big idea a few years ago, but many of the utopian early predictions of free wireless service across big cities haven't panned out, and the rise of high-speed cellular data coverage (such as with the iPhone), more free hotspots in cafés and such, and commercial WiMAX networks like Rogers Portable Internet have made it seem a little less necessary.

If you have any thoughts about this topic that you think I should address on the air, leave a comment below, email me, or send me a message on Twitter in the next couple of hours and I'll see if I can incorporate your ideas.

Labels: cbc, geekery, penmachinepodcast, radio, vancouver, web