http://www.pinciuc.com/ things i'm thinking about. en-ca Rob Pinciuc Copyright © 2003 - 2008 Rob Pinciuc. All rights reserved. 2007-06-04T15:16:27-05:00 2008-09-07T13:49:29-05:00 pinciuc.com Content Management System Rob Pinciuc 15 Google has added another new feature to its Maps application: Street View. In five U.S. cities (New York, Miami, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Denver) you can now switch to a street-level panoramic photo view of wherever you click on the map. Very impressive.

My guess is that they roof-mounted eight (judging by the seams in the panoramas) digital cameras in a circular formation on a vehicle and drove the streets (nearly all of them!). They trigger the shutters in the camera array every ten meters or so (perhaps the array is linked to the vehicle's odometer or wheel somehow to ensure even spacing). Of course, since the field of view of the lens is known, a computer can stitch the resulting image sets into 360 degree panoramas automatically, and via GPS coordinates (stored at the time of shutter release), can place the panoramas on the map. Voila!

I thought it wise to check in on the folks who created this new function down in sunny Mountain View, California and what do you know, it seems they've planted a little easter egg for us: the joyous geeks can be found posing on the lawn in front of the Googleplex carrying an odd assortment of shovels, rakes, flags, balloons and more. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/222 technology photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/222 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/222#comments 2007-06-04T15:16:27-05:00 rob
The most recent incident is my experience with the new PC game Neverwinter Nights 2, a role-playing game from Obsidian and published by Atari. I cannot play the game on my PC. I installed it, entered the CD key, updated it to the latest version with the built-in patch tool, but it just won't run. The game contains copy protection software by SecuROM that attempts to verify that an original installation disc is in the drive when you launch the game. My disc is in the drive, but the program tells me that "An original disc cannot be found or authenticated."

I've been emailing the SecuROM technical support people, who've had me install a new .exe (executable file) in the program directory. Same problem. Their latest email says that I'm trying to use the game from a "backup disc"--right! I am using the original installation disc that I purchased. Backup discs are for pirates... arrr!

This is almost as bad as the Oasis CD that I can't play in my car stereo because it has copy-protection technology on it, and my car stereo is a CD-ROM-based device from Clarion that can play MP3s burned onto CD-R.

Copy protection sucks. Why does it seem that copy protection only hurts the people who actually buy the disc? Pirates always find a way around it, and they can use copied discs to their heart's content, but people who actually pay for it with their hard-earned money get screwed. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/219 culture personal http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/219 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/219#comments 2006-11-30T12:14:35-05:00 rob This batch consists of 20 photos from our boat cruise on Western Brook Pond. The "pond" is actually a landlocked fjord, 30km in length and perhaps a few kilometres wide at the mouth, with 2000' cliffs of four billion year-old granite (Consider that Earth itself is "only" 10 billion years old). Pretty amazing stuff. It's no wonder Gros Morne is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The cruise is a must do for anyone visiting the park.

I've been working on some new techniques for processing my photos, especially black and white conversions. I'm applying a more liberal amount of dodging and burning, maintaing the full scale of luminances but trying to add more drama and emphasis to match what I originally felt when I made the photo. There will be a few more galleries posted over the next couple weeks where I hope to display some of the results. Please feel free to comment on anything you like or dislike! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/211 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/211 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/211#comments 2006-10-10T11:47:06-05:00 rob Adobe last night release Beta 4 of its upcoming Lightroom software, now dubbed 'Adobe Photoshop Lightroom'. I installed the software within an hour of its release and was pleasantly surprised, and simultaneously disappointed, with the update.

One of the biggest problems with Beta 3 for the Windows PC was speed. Lightroom was just plain slow, and with Beta 4 Adobe seems to have addressed this issue. The interface itself is now responsive and smooth, and image operations like changing photos, adjustments, and zooming are all now significantly faster--not as fast as Capture One, but perhaps fast enough.

The GUI itself has had a minor makeover, to my applause, with interface widgets being made a dark grey and black colour, more similar now to Apple's Aperture. I think there is still room for improvement here, though, with more transparencies, overlays, movable/draggable components, which could let users customize their workspace to their liking.

These improvements notwithstanding, Lightroom still suffers from a glaring lack of a few basic editing tools, which forces me to export and edit every single image in Photoshop, a time-consuming (and memory-intensive) process.

- No healing/clone tool: Dust is a problem for SLRs; interchangeable lenses and moving components inside the camera allow tiny dust particles to get inside and then 'stick' to the sensor's antialias or IR filter, showing up as small, dark spots on the images. Simple to remove with Photoshop's spot healing brush, but Lightroom provides no such tool, making an export required whenever a spot is visible in an image (which is often).
- No lens distortion correction: A gruesome reality with nearly all lenses, especially wide- and ultra-wide angles, and in particular zoom lenses, is distortion. Photoshop provides a Lens Correction filter that makes it fast and easy to correct this, but of course, this requires an image export from Lightroom. Lightroom currently has handy (and essential) chromatic abberation and vignetting correction controls, similar to those in Photoshop, but not distortion correction. It would be really nice if you could also save lens profiles (a la PTLens), and automatically apply them based on the lens used, which is saved in the EXIF header. Adobe needs to add this feature before Lightroom can be considered a standalone product. Until then, most photogs will also need to purchase Photoshop (perhaps this is Adobe's moneybags strategy).
- Inadequate sharpening tool: A single slider to adjust sharpening amount is not nearly adequate, and the current tool produces obscene halos at edges when applied to the appropriate amount. At the very least, Lightroom should include the functionality provided by Photoshop's Unsharp Mask filter, or even better, the Smart Sharpen filter. Ideally they would take it beyond that, with capture and output sharpening, edge sharpening, luminance sharpening, and saveable profiles. Until this is improved, I have to edit every image in Photoshop to apply sharpening.

These are the three biggest omissions, in my opinion, based on a couple of months working with Beta 3 on my Newfoundland galleries. There are clearly others (magnifying glass/loupe, EXIF editor, HDR blending...), but these are the ones that affect me the most. If they don't make it into the final version of Lightroom, I can only hope that some keen developer out there creates plugins using the Lightroom SDK to handle these functions within the program.

With the dramatic speed increase, though, one major hurdle has been cleared and the program is much more useable for me. It will save me a lot of time when working on all the photos I've made in the past few months... I'm so far behind! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/210 photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/210 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/210#comments 2006-09-25T12:27:18-05:00 rob photos from Gros Morne, except the ones from Western Brook Pond. I hope to finish those by the middle of next week. Gros Morne was, for me, the highlight of the trip to Newfoundland, and some of my favourite images are from the park.

I picked up a Contax Vario-Sonnar 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom lens for the Contax N system. A company called Conurus has recently released a conversion kit that allows these high-quality autofocus lenses to work on Canon EOS camera bodies. I gave the conversion a try, and some photos of the conversion are now online.

The conversion worked for two shots, then stopped working. Conurus is working out the bugs and I'm eager to try the fixed-up conversion kit once it's available. I've been looking for a high quality standard walkaround zoom for a while, but have avoided the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 due to its high price, large size and heavy weight. The Contax has a reputation for being sharper, higher contrast, less distortion, and is both lighter and smaller.

I also recently (July) purchased a Canon 400mm f/5.6 supertelephoto lens. I used it quite a bit in Newfoundland for wildlife and compressed landscapes, and expect to use it extensively going forward. Hopefully I can lug to the rainforests of Costa Rica or the serengeti of Africa some day! A gallery of photos with this lens is online.

There are a few other photography items I'll talk about in some upcoming posts, stay tuned. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/209 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/209 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/209#comments 2006-09-22T14:15:46-05:00 rob third batch of photos from my trip to Newfoundland is (finally) online, including the Bonavista Peninsula and Salvage. Most of these are quite a bit brighter and more colourful than the previous photos, since we'd finally gotten some good weather.

I'm hoping to get the final (and best!) batch from Gros Morne up by the beginning of next weekend (the 22nd).

You can now navigate through the photos in a gallery in the enlarged image view. Click on the "View Larger" link on any photo page and you'll see new navigation functionality (and a less cluttered presentation). ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/208 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/208 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/208#comments 2006-09-11T14:33:38-05:00 rob second group of photos from Newfoundland is now online. These are mostly from the East Coast Trail and whale watching, with a few from Ferryland and other assorted little towns.

It's taking a long time to develop the photos because Adobe Lightroom runs so slowly on my PC. I have a decent machine, too, so I think they've got a bit of work to do still to speed things up. Completely understandable, since it's the first public beta of the new software to be released for the PC. In any case, I hope to have the next batch, from the Bonavista Peninsula, online before the end of the week. Then it might be another few days before I get to the Gros Morne photos. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/207 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/207 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/207#comments 2006-08-21T16:55:59-05:00 rob in the Photos section. These are from our first couple of days spent in St. John's and hiking around Signal Hill and Cape Spear.

There will be several more "sets" to come, that seems to be the only way to get these done. There are so many to go through--I kept over 600 shots, and whittled that down to about 100 or so for the website--and working with Adobe Lightroom is proving to be a bit slower than my usual workflow with Phase One Capture One. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/206 photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/206 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/206#comments 2006-08-18T12:04:38-05:00 rob
We spent a week on the east coast, in St. John's, hiking the East Coast Trail, and touring the Trinity Bight and Bonavista areas. Then we spent a week on the west, in Corner Brook and Gros Morne National Park.

We saw and did too much to write about, but I can summarize by saying that we kayaked a couple of times (once on each coast, although not in Terra Nova National Park as originally planned), hiked a lot on both sides, spent a little time in the cities, met some new friends, got "screetched in", did a lot of camping, and took a lot of photos.

My personal highlights were Cape Bonavista, hiking in Gros Morne, and seeing all of the wildlife.

Next time I want to hike the Long Range Traverse, the backpacking trip that takes you from the famous lookout over Western Brook Pond, across the Long Range Mountains and to the base of Gros Morne Mountain. Besides the rugged terrain, this particular "trail" is different in that there are no actual trail markings; all navigation must be done by GPS, and map and compass.

I've yet to process the photos, since I'm doing it in the new Windows beta of Adobe Lightroom and just learning how to use the software, but I think I've got it figured out and am starting on them this week. Hopefully a full gallery will be up by the end of the weekend. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/205 personal http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/205 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/205#comments 2006-08-17T15:29:59-05:00 rob http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/204 personal http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/204 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/204#comments 2006-07-14T16:52:23-05:00 rob Google Maps and Google Earth are about the coolest of Google's applications to date. Even cooler is that they've created an API (Application Programming Interface) for Maps that let's website builders integrate Maps into their own sites.

I've finally gotten around to integrating Google Maps into my own website, specifically the Photos section, where you can now see, on a satellite image, exactly where my photos were made. It is still a work in progress with some bugs, but here are some examples:

- Killarney Canoe Trip, May 2006
- Adirondack Park, New York
- Killarney Canoe Trip, September 2005
- The French River canoe trip
- Algonquin Canoe Trip, June 2003

Galleries that contain geocoded images will have a link to the satellite map after the gallery description at the top. Images that are geocoded will contain a link to the map in the "Exposure Information" section at the bottom.

Since my camera, like nearly every other, doesn't record GPS information in the EXIF headers, I have to manually enter the coordinates for each image, known as "geocoding". This is relatively quick, but requires me to use Google Maps to navigate to each location (as close as I can determine) and then copy and paste the latitude and longitude into my CMS. So it will be some time before I've done this for all of my photos.

In any case, I think it's a worthwhile feature to have implemented, and hope you enjoy using it. I enjoy knowing where where my images were made, and find it interesting to view them on a map, especially on trips with specific routes like canoe or backpacking trips. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/199 technology photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/199 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/199#comments 2006-06-08T17:15:20-05:00 rob the new HTPC installed and running, the parts from the old one had to go somewhere. So this webserver (which also doubles as my home file/media server) has been upgraded from an AMD Athlon 800MHz "Thunderbird" to an AMD Athlon XP-M 2500+ running at 2GHz. I've also installed the 160GB hard disk from the old HTPC, where it will be the primary media storage drive for the new HTPC.

You probably won't notice much difference while browsing the site, as only a couple of functions are CPU-bound. Perhaps a miniscule amount of responsiveness, but not likely. I, on the other hand, will notice big improvements in thumbnail image generation, kernel and software compiling, and less CPU usage when downsampling audio files on the fly for streaming. Since I'll be saving HDTV recordings from the HTPC, the upgrade will help keep things running smoothly in terms of I/O and RAM performance. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/197 technology http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/197 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/197#comments 2006-06-02T14:50:52-05:00 rob
The sites uses many scripts written in PHP to display content that is stored in the database without having to create all of the individual web pages. The scripts use templates, then query the database and essentially fill in the blanks to create what you see. The dynamic nature of the pages requires URLs with query parameters, which in the past looked like this:

http://www.pinciuc.com/photos/index.php?gallery_id=111&media_id=3

It seems that URLs with query strings attached (everything after and including the ? mark) sometimes don't get indexed nicely by the major search engines. So I've followed suit with the major content management systems (CMS) and reprogrammed my scripts to use URLs like the following:

http://www.pinciuc.com/photos/gallery/111/3

This change has affected the blogs, Photos, and Music sections of the website. It should be transparent to you, and the "old style" URLs with query strings still work (in fact, the webserver just rewrites the "new style" to the "old style" internally, automatically).

I've also added a Search function to the website. In the main navigation bar on the right hand side you'll now see a text field with the word "Search..." in it. You can click in there, type in some keywords, then hit Enter (or click the "Go" button) to search my entire website. The search is powered by Google and implemented using the Google Web API.

It should now be easier to find something specific on my website just by searching for it. Try it, you'll like it!

Lastly, I've limited the homepage blog content to entries from the past 30 days. This should reduce some clutter (and motivate me to keep the page fresh!) You can now find the past 10 entries listed on the right hand side, just in case you missed something, and you can, of course, still browse the archives. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/196 technology misc http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/196 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/196#comments 2006-05-29T21:58:25-05:00 rob Brandon and I went on a three-day trip to Killarney Provincial Park as part of a group from the Wilderness Adventurers of Ontario outdoors club. Kristin was supposed to come on the trip but injured her ribs the week before and unfortunately couldn't make it.

We'd planned a day-hike to Silver Peak, the third highest point in Ontario, but unfortunately the gale-force winds and hail kept us from making the trek. The paddles in and out of the park were enjoyable, though, with clear-ish skies and no precipitation.

I've uploaded a gallery of my photos from the trip, and there are links to some of the other members' galleries as well.

Now that the first trip is over I'm more excited about the coming of Spring and Summer. Some upcoming trips include:

- June: Whitewater canoe training weekend at Palmer Rapids (finally, whitewater!)
- June: Sea Kayaking on Lake Opeongo
- July: Whitewater canoe trip
- July: Kristin and I are meeting up with Ron and Cindy for two weeks in Newfoundland!

I'm very excited about all of the trips, but obviously the trip to Newfoundland is what I'm really waiting for. Our plans so far include hiking the East Coast Trail, kayaking past icebergs at Terra Nova National Park, and of course, camping and hiking in the breathtaking Gros Morne National Park. We'll also be spending time in the cities of St. John's and Cornerbrook. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/194 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/194 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/194#comments 2006-05-29T21:03:39-05:00 rob
The Canadian international documentary film festival known as hotdocs took place this past April 28 through May 7, 2006, and Kristin and I went to see several of the films. Several, meaning, about 10-12 each!

Here is an alphabetical list of the films I saw:

- Black Gold
- Ghosts of Mardin
- The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
- Lessons of Darkness
- Little Dieter Needs to Fly
- MAQUILAPOLIS: city of factories
- OilCrash
- Our Own Private Bin Laden
- Pas de pays sans paysans
- Shadow Company
- La Soufrière
- Total Denial
- Walking to Werner
- When Elephants Fight (Uganda Rising)

The real standouts from this list include 'OilCrash', 'Black Gold', 'Total Denial', 'Pas de pays sans paysans', and 'When Elephants Fight (Uganda Rising)'. I recommend that everyone at least see 'OilCrash' and 'Black Gold', which will truly open your eyes (even scare you) as to why oil is the force behind the world economy, and why we're all going to be profoundly affected by the imminent decline in world oil production. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/192 culture entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/192 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/192#comments 2006-05-29T20:32:34-05:00 rob Apple phenomenon. I haven't purchased any products yet, but I like the iPod, the Macbook and OS X as much as the next guy, and am considering moving from my desktop PC to an Apple laptop this fall. So why the hard feelings?

Apple has just released the new Macbook, which looks like a really great deal: Intel Core Duo, 13" widescreen, Bluetooth, Wifi, Combo drive, etc. all for $1,100 US greenbacks.

However, the inclusion of a mini-DVI connector for an external monitor rather than a full-sized, standard DVI connector, and not including the adapter is a simple cash grab! The Mini-DVI to DVI adapter costs an extra $19.00 USD. There appears to be plenty of room for a full-sized connector on the left side of the machine, why not include it? I'll bet the mini connector actually costs more, being a non-standard size.

Now, the bigger issue: the Macbook is available with either a white or black polycarbonate case. The black model also includes the 80 GB hard disk--the only other difference between the two--but that is a mere $50.00 USD option on the white model. The $200.00 USD overall price difference between them makes the black plastic a $150.00 USD option!

This reminds me of the $19.00 iPod AV Cable that allows you to connect your iPod Video to a TV for video display. Apple claims (first paragraph, "other AV cables are not compatible with iPod with color display") that other cables are incompatible with the iPod... true enough, if you aren't savvy enough to discover that you simply swap the yellow and red connectors of an ordinary cable and it works!

I'm sure there are other examples of Apple cash-grabbing and would love to hear about them. Post your comments and help spread the word! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/190 technology http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/190 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/190#comments 2006-05-17T12:39:28-05:00 rob OS X Bootcamp! Essentially a boot manager with a utility to find drivers automatically for your XP install.

I'm having visions of millions of PC users who love the Mac culture and hardware, but don't love the OS, finally switching over to the Intel Mac. Maybe I'll be one of them!

This is a huge development, and one that I'm sure will balance market share and change the face of PC users everywhere. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/186 technology http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/186 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/186#comments 2006-04-05T11:34:21-05:00 rob
Of course, this is the result of one thing and one thing only: snowboarding. I've finally found something about winter I truly love. While I've only been six times, I already know that it's something I want to do for the rest of my able-bodied life. No longer will I despise the onset of bitterly cold weather, or a healthy dumping of snow on the city. No, these things now mean so much more than just frozen ears and traffic accidents - they mean that within a couple of hours, I can be blazing down the trails at a local ski hill, or that in the approaching season, I'll be seeking out bigger, faster, better destinations to lay down tracks in the fresh snow.

I envy Aaron just a little bit more now, for moving to Vancouver. So close to some of the best riding in North America (a la Whistler/Blackcomb). Aaron, you can count on having at least one visitor next winter!

I'm also very excited that a new Ride No. 4 161cm snowboard is on its way to my address right now! I'll still need to get some bindings and boots, and likely won't even get to ride it this season, but I can stare at it throughout the summer and dream of carving up some trails come winter 06/07.

Kristin and I went to the Gatineau area of Québec (we stayed in Wakefield) and checked out Mont Ste. Marie while we were there. At 1250' of vertical, it's 500' taller than Ontario's highest hill, Blue Mountain, so it seemed pretty big to me. While it didn't have a lot of good steep runs for Kristin, there were a few blacks that were really good for me and it was a great step forward for my learning. If you're planning on heading up that way and need a place to stay, I can recommend a great little B&B in Wakefield called Auberge de Mon Petit Chum. Our hosts Dawn and Jennifer were great, very knowledgeable about the area and well connected with the locals, and the accommodations were terrific and inexpensive.

That's all the fits for now, more soon (famous last words). ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/185 personal http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/185 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/185#comments 2006-03-22T16:32:41-05:00 rob
Seems that they have finally caught onto me after 2 1/2 years. I've had to implement a CAPTCHA (a Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) on my comment forms to prevent spammers from using their automated scripts to flood my site with links to their usual wares (you know the ones). I apologize for the inconvenience.

On the plus side, over 10 people have left comments on my Why MySpace Sucks post, a record. It looks like editorial/opinion stirs people's desire to comment more than just plain old boring news about my life... so expect more of it. Just wait until I'm brave enough to post my "Why Toyota Corolla Sucks" manifesto! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/184 misc http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/184 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/184#comments 2006-03-14T18:51:14-05:00 rob Linux 2.4.29 kernel with Megaraid2, Intel Pro 100 Ethernet, TCP/IP networking, and XFS filesystem built in, that fits on a 1.44MB boot disk? Please leave me a comment by tonight if you do - you would save me the time of having to install with reiserfs, build a new kernel with XFS, then make a new boot disk and reinstall the whole OS with that one. Slackware comes with a SCSI Megaraid2 kernel, and an XFS kernel, but not both drivers in one. Booo. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/182 technology http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/182 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/182#comments 2006-01-31T12:10:13-05:00 rob
- It is butt ugly. Not just the official site pages, but all of the user pages Case in point. They are ass, and they follow no modern design standards such as XHTML and CSS. Table overkill.
- Seemingly all of the links that I click on, even internal links to pages within their own site, open in new windows. What a waste of system resources and desktop space.
- This was found in someone's comments section.
- Their founders are quite the sketchy bunch (see here, here), linked to spyware, spam, income tax evasion, prison, and poor personal hygiene.
- Even though I am not a member of myspace, when I view someone's profile, it tells me "ducky is in your extended network". No he's not!!
- You are forcibly subjected to everybody's terrible taste in music when you load their page.

More to come. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/181 culture http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/181 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/181#comments 2006-01-30T15:52:20-05:00 rob
First thing's first, Kristin is off to Pakistan! She is gone for three weeks as part of a team of health workers doing earthquake relief. Her team is organized by the Canadian Relief Foundation, and consists of about 8 local Toronto nurses, therapists, and logistics personnel. She is working mostly in Islamabad, but they plan to also visit Muzaffarabad. Amazing! She has checked in via email a couple of times already and said that although so far it has been hard work, that she is really happy to be there and is looking forward to working with more patients. She also has a digital camera and will be posting a gallery of photos when she gets back, so stay tuned for more info.

Next up... snowboarding! I've been talking about trying snowboarding for a few years and finally (with Kristin's help) got my butt out to Blue Mountain a couple weeks ago. We went with the Not So Pro Ski + Snowboard Club on their Member/Guest day (photos) and stayed at Tamara's cool chalet in the village, which was awesome.

Let's just say it was difficult that first day (and sore the next few). Fortunately we had a great instructor for our lesson, and by the end of the day I could make it down the green run without falling. I couldn't turn, though, so I'd just traverse across the run, then go back across the other way, back and forth... as they call it, the "pendulum", or "falling leaf". But it I really liked it and was excited to go again.

Brandon is a member of the Canadian Ski Patrol and works at Oshawa Ski Club, so he invited me out to OSC. Well yesterday I went out and spent the whole day on the hill (pic from Brandon) and, lo-and-behold, learned how to turn (after a couple of hard wipeouts, mind you). By the end of the day I was doing the blue runs without falling, turning the whole way down (no more pendulum!), and leaning into some turns, which was a tonne of fun.

Okay moving on... my server rig is complete and ready to install into the colocation facility! This means that soon, after a bit of software development and some legal stuff, I'll be able to start selling space on it and my little business will actually be operating! It's taken almost a year to get it together but finally it's moving forward. More info on this soon, I've got lots of work to do still, but a major part was just getting all the right gear and getting it installed.

Last but not least, Aaron has moved to beautiful Vancouver, BC and has started his own blog, which can be linked to with the "Aaron Episode Four" link in my Network section, bottom right. We miss ya buddy!

Well that's about all for this installment, it was a long one. Must... post... more... often. More soon, go Wings go! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/180 technology personal business http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/180 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/180#comments 2006-01-29T13:27:37-05:00 rob
I've added a few new galleries to the photos section, including:

- INXS at Sony BMG Canada
- Tom Green at Hooters
- Adirondacks, New York (finally!)

It looks like the rumours of Carl Zeiss becoming a 3rd-party SLR lens manufacturer are true. Sadly, though, the lenses will be produced (at least initially) for the Nikon F mount (scroll down about half way). This is just one leaked image, so it's possible that Canon EF lenses will also be produced, but who knows. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

My manager at work has taken parental leave for six months, and I've been temporarily promoted to Manager, Digital Design and Production. I'm really happy about it, other than the very late nights last week. I'm happy to finally be gaining some managerial experience.

A couple of fun little projects we've put together in the past couple of weeks:

- Tom Green customizeable audio ecard
- Franz Ferdinand puzzle game, for a poster giveaway

Christmas is in 5 days and guess who hasn't finished their shopping? That's right. Well at least I have tomorrow off of work to get my butt down to the mall and finish up. It's not like I haven't started, I have a couple of things already!

If I don't write more until then, happy holidays and new year! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/176 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/176 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/176#comments 2005-12-20T18:46:25-05:00 rob Lake Placid and Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Park area of upstate New York. The area is absolutely beautiful, surrounded by the high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains, with gorgeous rivers, valleys and wetlands. Of course, Lake Placid has twice played host to the Winter Olympic Games (1932 and 1980), and it's easy to see why.

I made a few good photos during the trip and I hope to have them online by week's end. In the meantime, you can check out newly added galleries from my backpacking trip in Algonquin and our trip to Kristin's cottage in The Kawarthas region of Ontario, where we visited Petroglyphs Provincial Park and Warsaw Caves. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/168 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/168 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/168#comments 2005-10-25T17:41:43-05:00 rob
Some images from a walk around the Beaches in Toronto, and a shot of the church near my apartment, are now up. Check them out. You are only able to see up to a 1000px width image through my website, but take my word for it, the fullsize images have astounding resolution and microcontrast - it even shows in the downsampled images. The images are virtually untouched, just the tiniest amount of contrast and sharpening was used. I'm blown away!

]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/166 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/166 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/166#comments 2005-10-09T14:33:07-05:00 rob Canon EOS 5D arrived this week and I just picked it up today at lunch. First impressions are:

- The magnesium body feels solid
- The fullframe viewfinder is huge and bright compared to the reduced frame Digital Rebel
- The new 2.5" LCD is an enourmous improvement, especially in regards to resolution and viewing angle
- The new soft-touch shutter release is terrific at minimizing camera shake due to pressing the button
- It is F-A-S-T! Power-on, image review, image browsing, zooming, etc. are all instant

So yes, I'm very, very impressed so far (it's been all of 15 minutes). My thoughts on image quality (12.8 megapixels!) will come later after I've had a chance to compare it to previous images. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/165 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/165 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/165#comments 2005-10-07T16:20:56-05:00 rob uploaded some pics from the trip to Killarney Provincial Park last weekend. Kristin and I paddled to Nellie and Grace lakes, did some hiking on the ridges around them, and I took lots of photos while Kristin waited very patiently :) There are a few panoramic shots still to come so check back again sometime.

If you get a chance to visit Killarney, keep this area of the park in mind! It's a longer drive from the GTA (about 5 1/2 hours at my pace) but worth it in so many ways: it's more remote (less people), more scenic, more rugged, and full of history (Group of Seven painters). Not to mention that it's not difficult to get to Grace Lake in less than 4 hours in an afternoon with only one moderate portage. Maybe I shouldn't be giving away this secret, but I'm pretty sure that most of the four people that actually read this page probably don't canoe so you won't be booking the limited campsites all summer anyway :)

I also wanted to mention that we stayed at the Mill House Bed & Breakfast in Espanola the night before we went into the park. If you're planning to head into Killarney this way and drive up the day/night before, check it out. Our host Jewel is a native of Amherstburg, near my hometown of Windsor.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the pics, and please do leave comments.

I sold my beloved Canon EF 17-40 f/4L USM lens last night. I'm happy with the sale, and I'm confident the buyer will be happy with the lens, but it was a great lens on my Digital Rebel and I was a bit sad to see it go, although I'm sure I'll enjoy its replacements (see previous entry for details) immensely. I also sold my Digital Rebel to a coworker who took it on a train trip this weekend and loved it. I'm now prepped for my shiny new 5D! I can't wait 'til October 15th.

Went out for an evening cruise on Ron's 30' sailboat Friday night, it was terrific! The Toronto skyline is lovely from the water, and it's very calming to feel the boat silenty surf over the waves. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me (due to the aforementioned sale), next time perhaps. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/161 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/161 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/161#comments 2005-09-26T11:28:04-05:00 rob
Photos from my canoe trips to The French River and Algonquin Park's Barron Canyon are now online. I should have pics from last week's trip to Killarney online sometime on Sunday. I had an amazing time on all of these trips, each of them offered amazing scenery, and different from my usual trips to the Algonquin interior.

Next weekend I will be heading to Algonquin yet again for a solo hike of the northernmost loop of the Western Uplands backpacking trail (from the Rain Lake access point). I'm really looking forward to trying out some ultralight backpacking techniques, it should make the 3-day, 40km hike very enjoyable. I will also be doing some fall colour photography, so keep your eyes peeled for even more new photos the week after next.

Speaking of photography, and as some of you already know, I will be upgrading my Canon EOS Digital Rebel to the brand new Canon EOS 5D in mid-October. In preparation of the full-frame, 13 megapixel sensor, I've been replacing some of my existing lenses with some higher quality glass from Carl Zeiss. My Canon EF 17-40mm f4L is being replaced with Contax Zeiss Distagon T* 28mm f2.8, Distagon T* 35mm f2.8, Planar T* 50mm f1.7, and Sonnar T* 85mm f2.8. This will handle my wide- to medium-angle landscape photography. These lenses feature exceptional sharpness and contrast across the entire frame, and an almost 3D appearance that has become legendary in photography circles. I'm also replacing my standard "walkaround" lens, the Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS with the new Canon EF 24-105 f4L IS, which on the 5D, will provide wide to moderate telephoto capabilities, Canon "L"-series image quality, and Image Stabilization - a very good replacement.

I've begun planning a trip to The Adirondacks in upstate New York for the middle of October, just after my new Canon 5D arrives. This will be a car-camping, hiking and photography trip, and I hope to hike some of the "high peaks" area around Lake Placid, and some of the other river and lakes sections of the area. More info soon.

Next week has concerts for Interpol and Metric, very exciting. NHL hockey is starting up again, go Wings go! And a new gallery exhibition in Toronto by Ed Burtynsky is coming up next month, which I'm excited to see.

I'd say that's about enough for now, more soon! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/160 technology personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/160 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/160#comments 2005-09-23T12:34:59-05:00 rob
A new old gallery of photos from Grenadier Pond in High Park is up. The photos were taken in April, just got around to editing them last night!

I hung out backstage with Dave Grohl and the rest of the fighters of foo before their show at the Molson Amphitheatre Saturday evening. It was work-related - I shot about 10 minutes of video and a few group photos of their platinum record plaque presentation - but it was very cool. We're gonna hang out next time they're in town. Yeah right. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/158 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/158 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/158#comments 2005-08-16T11:41:00-05:00 rob
I went on a leisurely canoe trip to Frontenac Provincial Park for the civic holiday long weekend at the beginning of August. It was very scenic and an easy paddle helped make it a relaxing time. We also did some hiking on the interior trails.

I'm leaving Wednesday evening for a four-day canoe trip on the French River, which so far looks to be very rugged and rocky. I've never paddled in this type of landscape and I'm hoping to try camping on a rocky point for the first time.

For the Labour Day long weekend, I'll be canoeing in the Barron Canyon area of Algonquin Park. Not a difficult or long trip by any means, but supposedly one of the most dramatic landscapes in the park. I hope to make some nice photos of the canyon.

Then in September there'll be a solo backpacking trip on the northernmost loop of the Western Uplands backpacking trail in Algonquin Park. This covers the Rain Lake section of trail that we didn't do on our previous trip here.

Finally, sometime in early October, there'll be a canoe trip to Killarney Provincial Park to visit the picturesque Grace and Nellie Lakes, inspiration to Group of Seven painters Franklin Carmichael, A. Y. Jackson, and others.

That's the plan for now, so if you can't reach me on a weekend over the next month and a half, chances are I'm on the water or on the trail! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/157 personal http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/157 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/157#comments 2005-08-16T11:35:59-05:00 rob Check here for my gallery of Hillside Festival 2005 photos. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/150 photography entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/150 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/150#comments 2005-07-29T01:19:38-05:00 rob Hillside Festival 2005 was all of that. Musical highlights for me included Apostle of Hustle, The Hidden Cameras, Les Batinses and Dya Singh, and of course Buck 65, Stars, Broken Social Scene and The Arcade Fire.

There were many photos made, so it will take some time to sort through them and get them into web-ready form.

Many thanks to Jane for letting us stay at her place in Guelph. Thanks thanks thanks.

One other thing, I've neglected to mention that 28MM: Offline is available for purchase now from Lulu via link from the website. Would love to hear what you think if you've ordered a copy. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/149 personal entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/149 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/149#comments 2005-07-25T19:17:21-05:00 rob 28mm: Offline arrived in the mail, and they look terrific! I'm really happy with the quality of the book and the photos, and of course, it was very exciting to see my submission in print, in a real book! I still don't know, though, where/when you'll be able to order a copy, so stay tuned.

Next... some of my Foo Fighters photos of the Toronto show on June 16th were published on foofighters.com, the Foo Fighters' official website. The homepage photo (under "Latest Black Box"), and a gallery of photos in the Black Box section, which is the Foo Fighters tour archive.

Last but not least, my department launched a new Sony BMG Music Canada website today. It is powered by XML, XSL, XSLT, XHTML and CSS, all producing the HTML output that your web browser understands. Visit the W3C if you're interested in more information on those technologies. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/141 personal photography entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/141 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/141#comments 2005-06-28T22:54:49-05:00 rob Foo Fighters photos (Footos?) from their performance on June 16th at Lee's Palace. Hope you enjoy them.

And I've ordered a couple of copies of the 28mm: Offline book which, for those who haven't been following, I will have four photos appearing in. It should be available for purchase by the general public sometime next month, I'll let you know when and where as soon as I know. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/140 photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/140 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/140#comments 2005-06-26T15:56:52-05:00 rob Rachel James, the editor of 28mm and the forthcoming "28mm: Offline" coffeetable book that I've been included in, letting me know that I can now order copies of the book from a private website. The site includes cover photos, a 2-page preview, and my name (!) in the credits, and I have to say that I think it looks fabulous. From what I've seen of the preview photos Rachel sent out, and the previews on the private site, the other photographers included in the book have put forth some really impressive photos, and I feel privileged to have been included with them. Thank you, Rachel!

I'll let you know as soon as there's a public URL to view the book, and even order a copy if you feel so inclined :)

Also, I managed to weasel my way into the exclusive Foo Fighters show on Thursday night at Lee's Palace. The show was invite- and contest-winner only; all I had to do to get in (besides begging) was to shoot video and stills of the concert from the front of the stage -- what a pity, I know. Chad was also shooting video from the sound board, so hopefully some of my footage wasn't so lousy that it can be included in his stuff. The show, though... wow, the Foos rocked Lee's so hard that I still had partial hearing loss the entire next day. The guys were the consummate rock performers, smoking, chugging beers, swearing, spitting, and still playing a super-tight set with no sign of sloppiness or letting up. There were some other celebs about, including members of Our Lady Peace, Sloan, and Treble Charger. Good times, for sure.

Hopefully I can get permission to put the still photos up here on my site, so stay tuned. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/136 personal entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/136 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/136#comments 2005-06-18T12:35:18-05:00 rob Matthew, I broke down and created a Flickr account to host some of my photos. It will simply be a mirror of the Favourites gallery, with the intention of getting other Flickr users to view some of my images and then drop by my website to the see the full collection.

I must admit, the Flickr user interface is really well put together, and their use of Flash and Ajax to create an intuitive interface (rather than plain old form submissions and page loads) is extremely effective. This has got to be where UIs are moving for the rest of the web services industry, and has made me a believer that this is what I need to do for my own web applications.

One thing Flickr could use, IMO, is greater integration with their users' websites. In particular, one feature that I'd like to see is RSS/XML feeds of comments for the images. I would like to pull these and include the comments with the comments on my own site. Which makes me think that maybe they should also have XML feeds of entire galleries and I could then just use Flickr to organize my photos, and display them on my site however I like. Perhaps they do this already in some form... will have to look into it. Does anyone know?

Few new albums in the music section, including "Silent Alarm" by Bloc Party, "Guero" by Beck, and "Pretty In Black" by The Raveonettes.

Lastly... my Hillside Festival tickets came in the mail! I'm pretty excited to check out Buck 65, Stars, The Weakerthans, and of course, The Arcade Fire. Anyone else going? ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/134 technology photography entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/134 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/134#comments 2005-06-14T15:08:45-05:00 rob 28mm, one of my favourite photography websites, announced last October that they were shutting down I was really disappointed. I enjoyed each monthly issue from "cover to cover", and appreciated the diversity of the photographers and their individual styles.

To my delight, the editor also announced that one final edition, a printed coffee table book titled "28mm: offline" would be created in memory of the website, and that an open call for submissions had been placed. I'd been thinking about submitting something to the website for a while so it seemed like a good idea, albeit a long shot, to submit for the book. So I scraped together four images that I felt were some of my best and submitted them, thinking that would be the last I heard of it. Two months later I received an email from the editor informing me that my submission had been selected!

Along with 49 other photographers, I will have four photos appearing in the 200 page book, and a short bio at the end.

It's been a couple of months since then and the book is now nearing completion. I've seen some preview images and it looks fantastic! It should be ready within a few weeks and, since it will have an ISBN number, should be available for order in bookstores or online in the near future.

And if you haven't looked already, I encourage you to check out the amazing photography included in the fourteen issues of the online 'zine.

I'll post more details about the book as they become available, but for now just wanted to share my good news! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/125 personal photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/125 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/125#comments 2005-06-01T16:08:47-05:00 rob photos section:

- Algonquin in April: Some photos from a day trip to the park in early April
- Algonquin Canoe Trip, May 2005: Pictures from my recent canoe trip

There are also a couple of new albums in the music section:

- Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team
- Nightsongs by Stars

More soon. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/122 misc http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/122 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/122#comments 2005-05-27T01:11:08-05:00 rob
The initial plan is to provide Internet presence services such as website, ecommerce, email and file hosting, and consulting and development services in the area of web applications and content management. I also plan to produce a couple of web properties of my own in the future, which I'm not quite ready to talk about yet :) Everything will sit on my own servers colocated in a professional data centre here in Toronto.

I'll post more information about this project in the coming weeks, I just wanted to share my excitement with you. In the meantime, if you or your company are looking to start (or update) your Internet presence, I'd love to work with you, and if you have any of your own insights or stories about running a small business, I'd love to hear about them too. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/119 personal business http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/119 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/119#comments 2005-04-11T16:57:28-05:00 rob promised more changes to the site, and now changes there are! For a few reasons, I've decided to update the layout of the homepage to something a little more flexible for me, given my posting frequency (or lack thereof). With the three column layout I previously used, I had to carefully limit the entry count in the left and right to try and keep them about the same length. Of course, with varying lengths of posts this was hardly infallible, and the page often had a tendancy to look a little lop-sided down at the bottom.

Well, now you get one long column with entries from both the conduit and divert intermingled and sorted by time posted! It may or may not resemble a certain famous professional blogger's layout (no link provided, you figure it out), but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, isn't that what they say? And most importantly, no more worries for me about post length, column length, or trying to decide how to eloquently present excerpts of posts; and no more lop-sided pages and hacked up entries for you. It's a win-win. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/115 misc http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/115 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/115#comments 2005-03-29T01:42:56-05:00 rob coming soon" post if I hadn't waited at least a month to launch!

The new site is not a lot different from a functional point of view--there are a few new features here and there--but I definately think it looks better. Hopefully over the next little while it'll improve even more. I know there are a few rendering issues with Internet Explorer that need to be worked out, so for best viewing (and for supporting web standards and your own well-being), download Firefox. I have some ideas for new features and enhancements as well, so keep checking in and I'll post when anything is implemented.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the entire site is built to web standards using XHTML and CSS, with no tables for page layout whatsoever (there are one or two for tabular data, but that is what tables are supposed to be used for!). The XHTML source should be easily viewable on handheld devices and mobile phones, and is also screen reader- and TTY-friendly. I've found CSS to be very powerful and, once you learn its ins-and-outs and get used to working with it, it can actually speed up site development. Of course it also speeds up site access, eliminates redundant code, reduces authoring errors... it's the bee's knees!

There are links ("xhtml", "css") in the footer on most pages that you can click to verify that the page is compliant with the respective standards. If you happen to find one that generates an error, I'd love to hear about it.

So, I hope you like the new look, and of course, feel free to leave comments and suggestions, good, bad or ugly :) ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/109 misc http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/109 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/109#comments 2005-03-03T03:08:54-05:00 rob you can't teach an old dog?). The new design will be more stylized, modern, and attractive, although as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm impressing myself by becoming a CSS guru practically overnight. Well that's not entirely true, it was over a weekend, and I'm not a guru, but I am finally learning why this whole CSS thing is really catching on (see this great article). If Micro$oft can save 924 GB in bandwidth a day simply by getting rid of a few tables, I must be able to salvage at least a couple hundred bytes.

Anyway, the new site will be done entirely in XHTML and the aforementioned CSS. It should look exactly the same in most modern browsers (Spread Firefox!), it should load very quickly, and it should look nice. It will work mostly the same way as the current site, but I hope to introduce some new elements and changes over the next little while.

And before I forget, why doesn't Internet Exploder get with the program and support CSS properly? And why doesn't it correctly display alpha channels in PNG images? And why does it stick extra little white spaces and lines where they should'nt be? All this (and much, much more) is why Firefox is now my default web browser. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/105 personal misc http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/105 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/105#comments 2005-01-31T14:35:45-05:00 rob Metric show on Monday night at The Mod Club. Great show, especially since the Mod Club is fairly small. I loved how lead singer Emily Haines thrashed on her Sequential Pro-One synth.

Next is... I was surfing some blog sites and found Dave Winer's page called The History of Weblogs. He states that his Scripting News weblog is "one of the earliest and is currently the longest-running weblog" on the 'Net. This made me think about my first web pages way back in University. I had a personal web page as far back as 1995 - almost 10 years ago - at the University of Windsor, and I found my NetCore homepage from 1997 on archive.org's wayback machine. It has links to really old-school design pioneers like the blue dot (part of Razorfish), Kai Krause of Kai's Power Tools fame, and MetaTools. It also lists a few of the websites that I designed for NetCore. Crazy.

Last thought was... while at the Metric show, I saw the usual numbers of people with digital cameras, and a few up front with more professional looking rigs. Something made me think: what happens to the still photographer, and to still photography, (and this can include any type of photographer, eg., landscape, concert, news, street, etc) when digital still cameras become capable of recording and storing hours of live 30fps (or more) at very high resolutions, even at the resolution of todays dSLRs (from 6 to over 20 Megapixels)? If you can shoot full motion video, with the optics and resolution of an SLR, and virtually limitless storage, why would one take still photos? Or at the very least, why shoot only one photo at a time when you could hold the shutter button down for minutes at a time and then choose the best frame of the bunch later on? If you're shooting a concert, for example, why not shoot 2 hours of 8 Megapixel images on your 64 Terabyte CompactFlash card, then pick the best ones on your PC later on? Kind of takes the "decisive" out of Henri Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment". Does all of this technology detract from the creativity of still photography as it once was? ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/102 personal photography entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/102 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/102#comments 2005-01-27T12:52:50-05:00 rob
I found out in December that I will be keeping my job at the newly formed Sony BMG Music Canada. Hooray for employment... I think.

The holidays were spent doing the usual family things back in Windsor. K and I went to Chicago to spend new year's with Jody and Dave. I hardly remember Chicago being such a beautiful city (and what a skyline!) from when I visited years ago. We mostly just walked around downtown during the day, and bar-hopped at night. Photos of our exploits are now online.

To my near insanity, I've spent the past two weeks troubleshooting a friend's PC that kept freezing up. After countless software and BIOS tweaks, and swapping out virtually every component but the CPU, I finally discovered the problem: the damn power supply! It seems the P/S wasn't putting out enough juice when the computer demanded it, causing the lockups. Of course, it was literally the last component that I could possibly test out... Murphy loves me.

Some new music is online, and you can now check out the latest adds on the music section homepage. Standouts are controller.controller's 'History' and The Arcade Fire's 'Funeral'.

I've added some new functionality to the photos section. Galleries can now accept comments; you can now hide the comments section; photos can now have different titles and descriptions in each gallery they appear in; and a list of other galleries an image appears in (if any) can be found just below the image or description.

A list of friends' web logs now appears on the homepage in a new section called "network". Why don't you visit them when you have a moment?

That seems to be almost a novel now so it's time to shove off. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/98 personal misc http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/98 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/98#comments 2005-01-19T11:11:01-05:00 rob this time last November that I purchased my Canon Digital Rebel DSLR camera. I can't believe it's been a whole year already, but looking through my galleries, I'm very happy that I decided to go for it, and my interest in photography has grown so much that I would seriously consider becoming a professional, if only I had the skills and financial freedom to do it.

On the homefront, I now have a(nother) new roommate, a "Six Feet Under"-aholic from the 'burbs named Angela. So if you call or drop by my place and a woman answers, don't be afraid that my apartment was annexed by space invaders posing as smart, witty female humanoids... have a chat and welcome her to the neighborhood.

My HTPC is nearly complete, just awaiting the arrival of the Sapphire Radeon 9600 video card (my old GeForce 2 MX400 is holding ship right now). I'm using Beyond TV and a Hauppage! PVR-250 for PVR duties. Some preliminary specs and photos are here, with a write-up to come soon.

New gallery: a lunch-hour spent walking around Ernest Thompson Seton Park in late October.

A few new albums:

The Raveonettes - Whip It On
Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs (2 disc set)
Travis - 12 Memories

Update: my department didn't win the ADISQ award for site internet de l'année. We lost out to some crummy kids site at shilvi.com for "Disque Petite Plume". Boooo. They probably figured that Céline Dion has won enough awards already.

Snow! Driving to work this morning, I saw vehicles with a good bunch of snow on top. According to sources at work who commute from the boonies (aka, Pickering), there was a strange outbreak of snow even though the sky was mostly clear and sunny. Go figure.

Enough for now. ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/87 technology personal photography entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/87 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/87#comments 2004-11-08T11:10:05-05:00 rob
Distillery District
Algonquin Park In Fall

Also reorganized the photos section a bit, with a new parent gallery called "Around Town", containing galleries of photos from around the Toronto area.

Two websites that I work on are nominated for ADISQ awards, which are like the French Juno Awards. The sites are for French-Canadian artists Céline Dion and Garou, and are nominated in the "site internet de l'année" (website of the year) category.

I ordered three books from Amazon.com and they were subsequently lost in the mail. Fortunately they do maintain good customer service and they reshipped them (priority express!) promptly. The books are:

The Print - Ansel Adams
The Negative - Ansel Adams
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs - Ansel Adams

I've previously purchased The Camera by Ansel Adams, and with The Negative and The Print, now have the complete Ansel Adams Photography series. These books are highly recommended for beginning and advanced photographers alike, and I like to think they've helped me out a little bit!

That's it for now, get out there and enjoy the fall colours! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/84 personal misc photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/84 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/84#comments 2004-10-08T11:05:40-05:00 rob music section:

The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives
Hot Hot Heat - Make Up The Breakdown
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
The Zutons - Who Killed The Zutons?

The photos section has undergone a bit of a reorganization. I've categorized the galleries so finding them should be more intuitive, and the page less disorganized. Two new galleries to go along with the new layout:

Algonquin Backpacking 2004
Canadian International Air Show 2004

Enjoy, and please leave comments on the new galleries! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/79 misc photography entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/79 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/79#comments 2004-09-13T01:19:37-05:00 rob RSS feeds of the conduit and divert are now available from links at the bottom of this page. You can now use your favourite news aggregator (I'm currently using SharpReader) to read my updates and associated comments.

I'm also considering creating RSS feeds of the photos section, so I'll let you know if/when that happens. In the meantime, "these are a few of my favourite feeds...":

kottke.org
The New York Times > Olympics
CNet News.com
Digital Photography Review
Slashdot
Wired News
Plastic ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/65 technology personal http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/65 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/65#comments 2004-08-13T10:50:36-05:00 rob
Hope of the States - The Lost Riots - Not bad, kind of a cross between Interpol, Radiohead, Joy Division, and the vocal sound of Treble Charger, but not as good as any of them. I like the music, even if most of the tracks sound alike, but the vocals, which consist mainly of whiny half- and whole-note syllables, just drag along.

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures - Loving this disc, as expected. Nothing to complain about here.

Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? - Cool and funky, maybe a little too Veruca Salt-esque, but without the broadcast radio appeal (a good thing). Singer Emily Haines' vocals can be sharp and sweet within the same sentence, dynamic, and her vintage keyboards are very hip and retro. I'm not super hot on the lyrics, though; for some reason Courtney Love comes to mind? Not sure why.

The Polyphonic Spree - Together We're Heavy - This was a miss. Technically it's rich, layered and textured, very good, but the overall sound is way too 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat' for my taste. But I can see it being very uplifting and/or inspiring to the right kind of audience, just not me.

The Velvet Underground - The Best Of - So far so good. My first TVU disc, and I hear I need to get "TVU and Nico". A few standouts so far after only a couple of plays through the disc are "Heroin", "White Light/White Heat", "Stephanie Says" and "Sweet Jane".

Wilco - A Ghost Is Born - Love it. Can't get enough of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)". If you don't already own it, you really need to go out and buy this record.

Vacation in Tobermory was splendid. A week's worth of perfect weather, with swimming, canoeing, hiking, campfires, eating, drinking, and general relaxation does a body good. Very refreshing. Special thanks to Ken, Allison, Laine and Paige for hosting us at the cottage! Pics to come soon, promise.

Summer's half over :( Get out there and enjoy the rest of it! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/63 personal entertainment http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/63 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/63#comments 2004-08-04T12:28:52-05:00 rob photo galleries to the site, including:

June 1st - Kyle Riabko at The Rivoli
July 11th - Molson Indy
July 16th - Algonquin Canoe Camping

That's all for now, hope you had fun in the sun this weekend! ]]> http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/61 photography http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/61 http://www.pinciuc.com/entry/61#comments 2004-07-20T11:06:18-05:00 rob
Saw Franz Ferdinand perform at the Kool Haus on the 14th, which was really cool. If you haven't heard them yet, then you've got to check out these very talented rockers from Glasgow and their fresh mix of The Beatles-meets-disco-meets-post-punk rock and roll (in my opinion :), you won't be disappointed. The show was great, they rocked the crowd, everyone was dancing to the funky beats, and Controller.Controller opened, so how could it have been bad?

I also saw the very talented, pint-sized, John Mayer-in-training Kyle Riabko at The Rivoli. This was a Sony showcase, and I was given the go-ahead to do the online photos for the show. Of course, I haven't posted them here yet, but will soon. Stay tuned.

Now here's an interesting story... for Canada Day, Lisa, Brian, Kristen and I went to Cedar Point, the roller coaster capital of the world, in not-so