Life's Context » Places

Our Home Was No Place For A Lady.

Periapex — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:55:26 +0000

Resting In Peace near Hector, by the stream that runs behind our house, surrounded by the very Nature that she loved.

She is survived by 1 cat, 2 dogs, 6 fish, 3 parrots, and 2 humans.

7 Months old on April 10, 2010.

Rex and Lady.

Periapex — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:41:13 +0000

Say Hi to Rex and Lady (bet you’ll be able to tell which is which without me giving you any hints).

I’ve always preferred dogs to cats, but some convolutions of the universe knotted together to drop these two into our home: Our neighbour’s cat (a stray who goes to them for bed and breakfast) got knocked up and had some babies; We’ve had a crazy mouse infestation in our walls this year; When we saw these two, we knew they were way too cute for their own good so we decided that we’d better look after them.

They are currently in training. I’m getting them used to flash photography…

Back From the Galapagos Islands.

Periapex — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:51:23 +0000

We’re back from our 11 day trip to Ecuador (Quito, the capital city, and the Galapagos islands). The most difficult part of preparing for the trip was deciding what photographic equipment to take with me. The Girl insisted that we carry my 180mm macro lens, which I never ended up using.

What I did end up using was my brother’s Crumpler Whickey and Cox camera/laptop backpack, his 70-200mm f/4, my 17-40mm f/4 and 24-105mm f/4, 1 light stand, 1 shoot through umbrella, 1 580EX II flash, my SD500 compact with underwater case, and of course the 5D II. Add in assorted gels, filters, blower brush, lens pen, and wireless triggers, and there was barely enough room for clothes.

Luckily for us we didn’t need a lot of fancy clothes.

We toured the islands as part of a GAP Adventures group. There were 15 of us tourists in the group and GAP gave us duffel bags to repack our suitcase contents into. This made for much easier travel between islands.

The trip was an extremely active adventure full of hiking, biking, and snorkelling. The weather cooperated, the animals posed for photo ops, and our assorted bangs, bruises, and electrocutions were minor issues compared to our rewards for enduring them.

Not only did we luck out with all of that, but our group leaders were absolutely fantastic.

I’m slowly posting pictures of the trip to flickr. The lack of high-speed at home means that it’ll take at least a couple of weeks for all of them to get there, but as you’ll be able to understand once you see some of the shots, I’m glad that I carted all of that camera equipment around with me.

The islands truly do live up to their nickname, “The Enchanted Islands”. Their enchantments will remain with me for as long as I live and I’m pleased to see that the Ecuadorian government is taking extreme measures to preserve the biologic uniqueness of which the islands boast.

At some point in the near future, I’m sure we will all be able to look at the stewardship of these islands as an example of how we should all live and interact with the world about us.

Progress Check.

Periapex — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:28:32 +0000

Summer has finally arrived here in Cowland. We’re seeing consistently dry, hot weather now and you can see that people out and about are in much happier spirits. Summer is only about a month late.

I’ve been busy trying to stay out of trouble.

So far I’ve succeeded.

Our annual summer party rainfest (it has rained every year except for one that we’ve had the party) went off successfully again — no injuries, one broken fence gate, some assaulted frogs, and 2 overfed dogs.

I’ve been schooled and am schooling.

The latest person to school me was Rudy. I was refreshingly pleased to be given a few insights into his political thought processes. He argued some political points with me on facebook recently, but did so with intelligence and practicality. He’s someone that has made his own political decisions through reason and research rather than as a crowd-following Lemming.

I’m schooling myself in photography, as many of you know. It’s my newest hobby and I’m working my way through a stack of books, from visual composition, to using Adobe Lightroom. Playing with off-camera flash is the coolest thing I’ve come across in a very long time. It’s actually what’s keeping me away from this blog the most. Fragileheart has patiently volunteered her time to a couple of photosessions for me to work on my lighting.

Here’s an example of what off-camera flash can do for you. Take for example a painting that was created with heavy brush strokes or a palate knife. The surface of a painting like this is as important as the image itself. The strokes convey texture, emotion, and movement to the underlying image.

Straight-on, or flat, lighting produces this:

Lighting from the side produces this:

The trade-off (isn’t life full of these) is that the more texture you show, the less saturated your colours become. The trick is finding the right lighting ratio and angles to strike a good balance between colour saturation and texture and thereby do some justice to a piece that will still be best viewed live.

Annual Hiatus.

Periapex — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:23:15 +0000

The usual suspect.

My annual summer bloggin’ slow-down is currently in full effect. You might see some stuff on here every now and then but you’ll definitely see more stuff from me on Twitter or Flickr because those are places that I can hit and run.

Summer is just too short here in iglooland to spend it typing my crazy life’s details. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I always return.

Talk to you soon (I hope). I’ve gotta go and chase another visitor away…

The Effects of Atmospheric Pressure.

Periapex — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:42:55 +0000

Spring weather is here, and with it comes a very active interplay of high and low pressure systems. All sorts of displaced strangeness occurs such as the sounds of songbirds and wild turkeys in the middle of a blizzard, hot sun and yet the existence of snow banks, and this:

It’s a water jug that I filled at home so that I could water the plants at work. It was filled in the morning and looked entirely normal. By the end of the day the high pressure system that had moved in crushed the bottle.

The Toymaker’s Apprentice.

Periapex — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 10:24:49 +0000

The best toys for most animals are those that can be destroyed. For birds, toy destruction is a way to channel aggravation and frustration while in their cage. In a future post I will write about this further with respect to the self-mutilation that birds will do if they have no distraction from boredom and frustration.

Unfortunately, destructible toys cost money. The more destructible the toy, the more the bird enjoys it, and the more often you have to spend money to replace the toy.

Commercial toys are nicer to look at than homemade toys, yet homemade toys can offer hours of entertainment for your pet bird. They don’t care about how a toy looks. All that matters is how easily they can shred, puncture, or fragment it.

I started stringing together toys for our birds years ago out of wood and plastic trinkets that I bought online from a bird store. The idea was to use these components to build your own toys.

I eventually realized that I could get most of the same things from the dollar store or even a hardware store — much cheaper and with many more options.

Here’s my workshop:

And here are some resulting bird toys:

There are bits and pieces of rawhide and wood and rope from other toys that were previously mutilated. I add in telephone books, PVC piping, and pieces of hemlock and cedar from the trees around our place. I’ve used birch to make their perches.

Everything is destructible, everything is fun.

Our birds have the same zest for these toys as my cousins did when they would come over for our family parties and destroy my brother’s toys.

Yeah, you know who you are…

I See Dead Animals.

Periapex — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 02:21:52 +0000

The rain that had been predicted for this weekend held off long enough for the warmer temperatures to offer us an opportunity to do some gardening.

This was the first bit of gardening that we’ve done for the year and it consisted of a clean up of dead leaves and grasses.

Everyone was having a great time (the wine on the windowsill helped):

Until The Girl found this:

Out With The BMW, In With The Subaru.

Periapex — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:43:34 +0000

After years of little niggly problems costing tons of money to fix and then recurring, I finally had enough. From getting rear-ended the second day after I got the car, to having my emblems stolen, to parts wearing out excessively fast (and only being able to purchase them from a dealership), I said, “enough”.

The recession makes buying something like a new car quite a dream. I chose a sage green 2009 Subaru Forester, traded in the jalopy, switched plates, and won’t look back.

I will not buy another BMW.

As The Vapors sang:

I’m turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
I’m turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so
Turning Japanese
I think I’m turning Japanese
I really think so

Office Trip 2008: Punta Cana.

Periapex — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 15:03:08 +0000

And…we’re back.

In fact, we’ve been back for a while now, but I just haven’t been able to find the time to be on the Internet as much as usual. This is because of work and dancing, but mostly because of the Dog Whisperer. Cesar Millan has captured our interest to the point where we’ve been working diligently with his techniques and have been achieving amazing results. This all stemmed from a simple question which was posed to us at the Humane Society, “Cattle dogs can be very aggressive. How will you manage her if she becomes increasingly aggressive over time?”. We had no answer of substance. Now we do. More on this in the future.

Our office trip to Punta Cana in the Domincan Republic was loads of fun as we expected. We stayed at the Majestic Colonial resort over there:

The next vacation that The Girl and I will be taking is still in the planning phase, but will be a more adventurous trip somewhere on the continent of my birth. I’m looking forward to that one later this year.