I see the world through pixeled glasses

Get a real freak'n holiday!

2007-01-03T09:42:00.000-05:00

January 2nd is not a holiday.

End of story.

Unless you live in Quebec.

Yup, that's right, in Quebec the day AFTER new years is a holiday... sorta. The studio where I work is open which means I have to work, but Zellers and lots of other retail and food places are closed. The mail still got delivered yesterday (which was Jan 2nd) but the commuter train that I take to work was not running. And I mean not running and the offices where closed. Not just running on the lazy Sunday schedule, oh no... completely closed! Effectively closing off the West Island commuters from getting to work. Commuters like myself. ARRGGG!!!!

"But Randy" you say. Why not just take the day off?"

Because then I'm being forced to use a vacation day just after I've taken a whole week off for the holidays. Forced to use it on a day that really isn't a holiday to start with. They don't even have a name for this day. It's just general practice that it's a holiday! WTF! I usually have this argument with my friends at work every year. They try and convince me that is really is a holiday and that other places take it off too and I tell them they're on the crack and no one else in the whole North America takes this day off. We're currently at a stalemate.

My first year here in Montreal I stayed with a friend and on the second of January we both got up and went to work using the subway system (Metro System here). No one said anything about it being some crazy made up holiday. I was none the wiser and ended up being the fool.

The next year I moved out to Pointe Claire and on the second of January I walked out to the train platform and was shocked to see no one there. I waited a bit and then some guy in a touque walks by and says "You're not waiting for the train are you?"

"Yeah." I replied cautiously "Why?"

"Well, you'll be waiting a while. It's a holiday today." says touque guy.

"Since when?"

"Forever." he says and continues off to his, I can only assume, place of work which he is walking to.

I tell you I was so mad. I've never been mad at getting an extra holiday until this day. No one says anything, it's not written anywhere, it's just an assumed holiday! ARRRGGGG!!! I stomped off home and didn't go in to work that day.

The next year the second of January fell on a Saturday. This was great because now I don't have to be bothered by that stupid made up holiday that goes on here. WRONG! See because it was on a Saturday that stupid made up holiday gets held over until the next working day so people can still have it. OMFG!!!! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ABOUT!!! IT NOT A REAL FU#@ING HOLIDAY!!!! Luckily I was a little more prepared as I found out a delayed bus was still running and so I took that to work and back.

This year I've moved further off the island and need the commuter train to get in to work. My wife drives me out to Pointe Claire again to catch the bus, I'll just buy the next years train pass when I get in to the city and be all prepared to come home and take the train the next day. Wrong again. The whole commuter train outfit is closed. CLOSED! What the hell! So I had to go back down to the Metro and buy ($$$) a bunch of Metro/bus tickets so I could get to work and get home (my wife had to pick me up in Pointe Claire again) only to have to buy a special train ticket ($$$) to get in to the city so I could buy my monthly train pass ($$$).

Suck ass.

I hate the second of January more then any other day in the whole year.

It's not a holiday.

Stop pretending it is. >_<

Here's some photos I took last year.

Suck-tastic!

2006-08-02T09:53:00.000-04:00

Ever have a crappy day that turns out to be a crappy weekend only to be followed up with a whole crap filled week? Well that's me. Actually it hasn't become a full week of crap yet but it's been 5 days of suck so why stop there? Here's a quick run down of the suck that's been happening in my life. Arguments with my wife based on lack of sleep, Chuck E Cheese scaring the life out of my daughter (I'll kick that mouse square in the nuts next time I see him), tiff with family members and longest car ride home EVER! Okay, life can't always be a bowl of cherries and things will pass. But the weekend is over, it's supposed to be a new week filled with better things right? Wrong.

I found out on Monday that E3 has been canceled-ish. I say ish because E3 still exists but now it's going to be some thing different then what it was. No more big floor trade show, smaller venue, smaller attendance (5,000 rather then 60,000). Great, that pretty much too all the wind out of going next year since I couldn't make it this year. On a side note I still stand beside my decision to stay and help take care of my daughter. Even if I knew at the time this was the last E3 I would still stay home because my little girl needed me and I wasn't going to leave my wife to take care of her on her own. I'm upset and angry about the whole thing, but not at my family and certainly not at my daughter. It just really, really sucks. But then I think, maybe it's not going to be so bad. Industry people are saying this is a good thing for E3 and that they support it. So maybe I'll still go and check out this new E3. Nope, can't do that ether.

Tuesday I found the date for E3 is moving too. It'll now be in July rather then May so the plane ticket I had to cancel that's only good for one year might just be useless. Well maybe not quite. If I use it in, March let's say, to book a flight in July I should still be okay or maybe even use it for a family vacation that wouldn't be so bad. Which I might have to do anyway because I also found out that next E3 is by INVITE ONLY! MOTHER F$#*@) SH#@ DAMN C*@% SUCKER @&*@&$# *@&$!!! Pant, pant, pant…

It's been the running joke in my life for a bit now.

Q - "Hey! What's keeping you from going to E3 this year?"

A - "E3… E3 is keeping me form going to E3 this year."

Then to finish off yesterday the air conditioning was busted on the commuter train going home on the hottest day of the year so far. I was trapped on a train with windows you can't open for 40 min. The sweat poured down my face and it looked like I had dunked my head in a bucket of water. Everyone was so lethargic on the ride home. I now know what it feels like to be a dog in a car with the windows up on a hot day. Suck ass. I hope today is better.

Well, to end this on a better note I'll mention some nice things that have happened as well. On the weekend we went to a wedding of close friends and it was a very beautiful ceremony outside at their cottages by the lake. I was able to get some very nice photos. We got a new car seat for my daughter and it's excellent. The guy at the store we bought it at http://www.canadiankidsfurniture.ca/ in Kingston Ontario was awesome and even helped us install it correctly. We will defiantly go back to that store. My wife is hosting an attached parenting group now and while she's only done one gathering it seems to be a hit. Those are all good things, so I guess it's not all bad.

Oh yeah, and my wife is pregnant again! Woo! My family rocks ^_^

Blue marble

2006-07-21T09:32:00.000-04:00

As of late I've been doing research in to the 911 attacks and how, in my opinion, they where orchestrated by the American Government. I just watched Fahrenheit 911 and the whole thing makes me angry and sick. There is so much suffering, corruption and deception all for money and power. It makes you tired just thinking about it.

But then a friend passed me a link to wherethehellismatt.com. It's about this guy who goes around the world dances in various locals. First he did it on his own dime but then actually got sponsored by Stride gum to travel, dance and place the video on the net. Now Matt isn't a good dancer but that's okay, it's the fun that he has that makes these videos great. And seeing these videos made me realize something. Although there is much hate and violence out there, the world and its people are really a beautiful. It's beautiful beyond what any of us can imagine, because we really need to see it for our selves. And it's right here, on our very own planet. It makes me want to travel and see the world. I'm sure my daughter would benefit from seeing the world first hand, I mean, what child wouldn't. I would love to give her that opportunity to experience all that.

It really is an amazing planet that we live on.

No E3 for me.

2006-06-23T12:31:00.000-04:00

Hey! Ask me how E3 was!

“Uh… Randy, how was E3?

I don’t know I never made it.

“What?”

Yup, my daughter got very ill the night before I was supposed to leave for LA. Came down with a fever of 105! We (me, my wife and daughter) spent the night in the hospital seeing if she would take fluids so she wouldn’t get dehydrated. No such luck as she would only throw up anything she took in. The next day we went to her pediatrician and she said that even though her temperature has come down a bit (102) we should still go to Sick Kids Hospital in down town Montreal. So after a nap at home we packed up and went to sick kids. She was perked up by that point but it took a bit for her to start taking fluids as I’m sure she was scared she was going to throw up. Poor thing. It really sucks seeing your kid sick. She eventually decided that drinking was okay again but she still had a low grade fever and continued to have it for a few days. So as a result I decided to stay home. E3 will happen again next year and Ali needed me home more then I needed to be at E3. I stayed home and help take care of her and such. It was the right thing to do and I have no regrets on my decision. What kind of Dad would I have been to take of to LA when my daughter was really, really sick. Stace felt really bad and even tried to get me on another plane to LA the next day but I said “no” and that I’ll just go next year.

So instead of going to E3 I later went to Massive Black’s Art Workshop that was being held in Montreal this year. It was very cool, but not what I expected. It wasn’t so much a work shop as it was a watch the artists work. But I did come away with a better understanding of myself as an artist and saw how I was limiting my skills in Photoshop. By watching them paint I was able to see ticks that they use and take in the whole process of making a great piece of concept art. Very cool.

I also got a chance to take pictures of old Montreal down by the ports and factories. It was very nice and very different from the new Montreal areas. Even the Massive Black people said to go and take pictures of the city and get inspiration from the buildings and art because (assuming you don’t live in Montreal) when are ever going to be back. Each city is different, no two are the same so take pictures and take in the locations that you are in because you may never return. I can go back any time I wish but it’s good way of thinking. And with that, here are some pictures from that weekend.

I'm not a geek. I'm not the least bit cheesy smelling.

2006-05-05T15:58:00.000-04:00

The other day I woke up to see my neighbourhood blanketed in a cover of fog. What was my first thought? Grab the camera and snap some pictures on the way to work, which is exactly what I did.

I got a few good ones around where I live and almost missed my train due to a freight train preventing me from crossing the tracks. Which wouldn’t have been so bad as it would have given me an extra half hour to take more in my area, but the freight train passed and I was able to catch the train in to work… sigh. I only hoped that the fog would still be around when I get to the city. Well, it wasn’t as thick but there was still fog rolling between buildings which was great because who can predict when you’ll have thick fog in down town Montreal.

I even had a location in mind to take some photos this time. See, a few weeks ago I had to go to Brockville Ontario to meet up with my wife and daughter. Well, thanks to some of the crazy Native peoples from my rez blocking the train tracks (it’s okay, I can say that since I’m part Native), the train was cancelled and I had to take a bus. So I get on the bus and away I go, not realizing where in the city I was. It would turn out that I was close to where I get off the train everyday on my way to work so I was able to spot out some cool things and places to take my next set of pictures. So mix up some fog with new photo locations equals some very nice pictures. I was very pleased.

Next week I’m off to E3. It’s all pretty exciting and scary all at the same time. See, I’m a worst scenario kind of guy so I’ve already painted up some pretty crazy (although logical in my mind) situations to happen while I’m gone. Everything from my plane going down in a huge ball of fire to Canada being over thrown by some other worldly government thus preventing me from retuning home and so I have to live in the airport. It could happen. Plus there is the fear of all the greasy, sweaty, cheesy smelling, socially retarded geeks invading my personal bubble that will be attending E3. I’m not sure if it’s really true to be honest. See, I’m an E3 virgin. I’ve heard people say that, yes it really is that bad and no, it’s not. I guess its all how you look at it. I’m bracing for the worst though. I’ll of course take pictures when I’m there and give a recap on my first E3 when I return.

As long as Canada is still here when I get back.

My world in pictures

2006-04-21T08:12:00.000-04:00

Due to an influx of money recently I have been able to go buy a new camera. A Cannon Power Shot A540. Joy and happy days ^_^ I’ve been waiting for this for some time now, and with the days finally getting warmer I can actually take a camera outside without the batteries konk’n out on me after a few minutes. My daughter now gets to play with our previous digital camera seeing as she likes to take pictures like Daddy (I should post some of her photos some day) and I get to play with the new camera so everyone’s happy. Actually a new camera was in order anyway since I just got done taking photo's and designing my step mothers CD. I had to use thier camera since my old one is only 2 mega pixels and not nearly good eoungh to handle the job. Now, I'm set for anything.

I’ve already been out several days in a row taking pictures and seeing what I can and can’t do with all the features of this new bad boy. Now let’s see here, I went form no real features on the old camera to 20 different features on the new one. It’s quite over whelming but lots of fun. I think I’ve used 3 or 4 different settings so far and they’ve just been preset features like “landscape”, “portrait” and such. Later I’ll fiddle around with the manual options where I can adjust my own shutter speed, aperture and focus. I still have the shaking issue when I take some pictures as I didn’t want to shell out too much money on a camera with the new fancy “stabilizing” technology since I’m still such an amateur. But that’s fine and most times I just keep trying different settings until I get what I want. Later I can see me getting a tripod as well and that will eliminate the shake more as well.

It’s easy to get excited about the prospect of taking better and better pictures. Especially with digital cameras since you can just delete the ones that don’t turn out. I’m usually taking 3 or 4 shots on different settings and standing positions/angles to see what works out best. I’m even looking to the future because when I’m ready I can get extra lenses for my camera like a telephoto lens and such. I actually found out yesterday that I would like to have a telephoto lens for taking candid pictures of people in the city. I had to abandon several pictures because the people could hear my camera beep and would look in my direction. Oh well, all in due time. I’ll have plenty of things to snap with this camera before I really feel like I want a new lens.

And now... here's some more pictures from my new camera.

My thumbs are dance'n for joy ^_^

2006-01-20T13:36:00.000-05:00

A few days ago my fabulous wife went and purchased me a Nintendo DS. Partly because I wanted one and partly because I wouldn’t stop whining about it, seriously I was like a 6 year old. Well maybe not that bad, but my GBA SP was on its way out and was feeling pretty down and out about it. But huzzah! Happy days are here again. I have new DS a few new games to play so I’m one happy pappy. I’m having so much fun with it too; I now see what all the hype was about. My first two games are Mario Kart and Meteos and both are proving to be worth every penny. I keep my DS on my desk at work and I stare at it out of the corner of my eye… It wants me to play it… it calls to me…

I also went as saw Kong a few weekends back. Not a bad movie, I think Peter kept his 3 hours a 7 min flowing pretty good. I took a convenient bathroom break during the bug fight though. Bugs… ewww… So the moive was good but being in a movie theater again brought back good times. I used to work in a Famous Players as a projectionist and I have to say it was one of the most excellent jobs I’ve ever had. I got to work up stairs by myself. I got to see ever movie that come though the place for free if I wanted too (I’ve seen Austin Powers 3 seven times!). I got to see lots of movie trailers which is always fun (I might have even scammed a few 35mm trailers before I left too. Don’t worry. They would only have been thrown out anyway.), I even had to learn how to splice a movie together and got to hear some neat-o projection and movie house history. Yup, it was a blast. If only it paid better. Ah well, they’re good memories (I remember free body pillow sized bags of moive popcorn... Mmmmm... true story).

And now for some icy pictures I took during the holidays. All but one where taken at my Dad's house up north of 7 in a little town called Madoc. Can you guess which one it is? I think it was the day after boxing day that I took these. Was had a lot of freezing rain so everything was slippery and shiny. All over cast though, I was hoping for a nice sunny day but you can't find nature. Still all in all I think that they're pretty good. Always improving I am ^_^

I taked abut pixels... like a month a ago!

2005-11-28T13:02:00.000-05:00

So the pixel talk went well. I practiced just about everyday for a whole month while I planned it out because I didn’t want to get up there and pull a blank or sound like a fool. I it seems to have worked. I was told by lot of people afterwards that they really enjoyed my presentation. I’ve even been asked to go and speak with the graduating animation class at Algonquin and maybe even give the same speech to the Game Developers class. That it pretty cool I think ^_^ Next step is to write out the presentation so I can distribute it to those that couldn’t be at the summit and maybe, just maybe, I’ll want to turn this in to a book. I think that would a great thing to add to ones resume and a neat thing to tell my daughter.

In the meantime I’ve been drawing as usual and getting back in to picture taking. In this latest batch I decided not to let the limits of my camera get me down. I took pictures with out the flash (Which results in a huge shutter delay and usually blurry pictures) and I used the digital zoom that my daughter found on the camera the other day (she’s 2) but the pictures generally come out all pixely when I use it. But I didn’t care; I was going to see what I could do with out worrying about all that. The results seemed to be okay, but I quickly realized that our camera hates, hates, hates, night shots. The colours turn out ugly in my opinion, but alas… Ya take what you can get.

On top of all that I’ve been keeping up to date on the whole Xbox 360 thing. Man, talk about crazy! People getting robbed on the way home, others on ebay shelling out over $1000 bucks for the system and just plain mass hysteria at stores. Now, I’m all for getting things when they first come out, it’s nice and you feel kinda special, but come on! People would buy their system, walk out of the store and have people be offering twice the amount for the blasted thing! I heard others where willing to pay hundreds of dollars just to get further in line! Crazy I tells ya. It reminds me of way back in the 90’s where people where stealing new Nike Air and Reebok Pump shoes or even mugging people for them. I just wonder if some of those people that shelled out $1000+ dollars for an Xbox woke up the next day, looked at their new system and wondered… oh god… what have I done, like it was the morning after some crazy drunk’n party… probably none of them but it’s funny to think it.

I'm gonna talk about pixels damn it!

2005-11-01T23:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been wanting to post about this for some time now but I just haven't found the time. It would seem that I'm going to be talking at the Montreal International Game Summit, my topic. Pixel art in and out side of games (I chose it myself).

The question as to wether or not I would talk at this thing came in about a month ago. How could I pass it up. Something like this would look great on a resume, not that I'm shopping around for a new job. So here I sit, with a power point presentation on a CD and enough cue cards on pixel work to choke a horse (or at least fill one hour I hope), I do my talk tomorrow (Nov 2nd) at 2:00pm infront of 100+ people from the game industry. I'm nervous, but I believe that's a good thing. I don't want to go in all cocky. To be honest, after this is all done, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my time. This has taken up all the spare moments I have available including my train time to and from work each day. After tomorrow I guess I can get back to taking pictures, playing games and drawing... what a crazy thought.

So wish me luck. This could start a new chapter of my life or at the vary least something to tell my daughter when I get older. Tomorrow should prove to be interesting.

I guess I'll show some of my own pixel work in this post. It seems only fitting.

A watery tale

2005-09-26T17:03:00.000-04:00

In addition to photo’s I have a little story.

My wife got our daughter a fish last week. One of those beta samurai fighting type fish. My daughter named it Mack and would run over to the tank and say “Fish! Daddy fish! Mack!” Three days later it was dead. It some how contracted a body rot type disease which ate it’s tail and some of it’s body for it died. A guy at the pet store told us this take normally takes about a month for this to happen once the fish gets sick and is treatable if caught early enough. I’m guessing it was sick when we got him.

Now I’m sure most normal people would just flush it and move on. Not me. See, I had to put down my first dog only a year and bit ago. She was suffering from invertible disk disease and was in horrible horrible pain. I was awful to watch and even worse to lose her. To this day I still miss her. Because of this incident I became a changed person. I can no longer cause harm to another creature of any kind. I can’t even swat a fly or kill a spider. I have to get a broom and swoosh and sweep it out of the house so it can continue to live it’s buggie life. I mourn the loss of all creatures now.

My wife told me over MSN Messenger that Mack had died in the night. As silly as it sounds I was very sad. My daughters first pet had just died. That night I went home and held a little memoriam for the fish we had for three days as I buried him in our backyard. I can’t put my life above or below this fish. He is no more important then me and I expressed this as I said goodbye.

Am I strange?

We got her some more fish. Just some feeder fish. One of them died as well. Just from the stress of moving to a new tank. I guess fish can’t handle such things very well. Once again I buried the fish and once again I said a small goodbye to the fish. I’m sure I’ll do it for the rest of them when they eventually pass too. It's hard though when my daughter runs to the tank now and says "Daddy, Mack?" and my wife and I have to tell her that Mack isn't here any more. It just breaks my heart.

I view life very differently now that my Pheobe girl is gone.

Thanks Pheebs

Flapper Town

2005-09-16T12:07:00.000-04:00

I’ve come to the conclusion that your child will only throw up at 1:36AM, that your dog will only eat a handful of ant traps on a late Saturday night and that your toilet will only breakdown or clog just after all the stores have closed for the day. I have lived through all of these but from time to time they come back to haunt me. This time it was the toilet (my child threw up in the wee hours last month so I should be good on that one for a while. Also to throw a bit of crazy in to the bowl this time, because I own my house now I can’t call the landlord to come fix the toilet. I am the landlord.

It would seem that the chain on the “flapper”… yes… that’s what it’s actually called, broke thus hindering us from flushing (thankfully we have two toilets. Thankfully though there was still an hour before the hardware store closed for the night so I jumped in the van and took off to Flapper Town (actually it was just Rona). I found them easily enough and slapped down two bucks for it and went back home. I had to remember where our home inspector said the water shut off valve was but once I found it was all easy. Once the water was off I was able to drain the tank and replace the flapper with ease. Our Home Depot quick repairs book helped too.

Once I was done I had this I had this great feeling of fixing my own home. I felt like… my Dad. I remember watching him fix things or going with him to the hardware store to get some parts or tools. It was great. Soon my daughter will watch me fix things and the process will start again. It really is a wonderful feeling.

Well, I was able to get out and do some quick photo taking. Nothing to fancy, just some shots around the Bell Center is all. Once I got out there, I remembered how much fun it is to take pictures and how much I want a new camera.

But good things come to those who wait. ^_^

I know art-fu...

2005-09-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

Still no new photo’s yet, but I do have a sausage.

Get your mind out of the gutter >_<

It’s been so long since I’ve been out taking pictures. I watch The Weather Network and if it says it’s going to rain I don’t take our camera. It doesn’t swim well. Some days it says it’s going to rain only for it to be a bright sunny day. Geez… Also this past week my wife and daughter and dog have gone to visit her brother in Oshawa taking the camera with her. So no snappy snappy for me this week. Oh well. I’m going to for sure take it out next week. I should get some photo’s going before it gets too cold out and with the way the weather is that shouldn’t be long.

Okay, I’m sure people are thinking “Why did you draw a sausage?” well, a friend at work brought her Intellevision II to work the other day and we played Burger Time. Ahhh the memories. Now I’m not going to get on a soap box and go on about the state of the game industry. There’s plenty of other sites for that. I will say that I had more fun playing Burger Time then some of the new games of today. Some things just don’t get old. Anyway, a comment was made as to how you the player have to use your imagination to really see how that jagged bunch of pixels on the screen could be a chef, burger or a sausage. So after work on the train ride home I drew a terror sausage of sorts in my sketchbook and then the next day I painted it. Such joy… such fun ^_^ I’m quite proud of it and have been sending it to people all day and pestering then with the question of “Hey, remember Burger Time?”

Hmmm… Maybe I’ll draw the Pickle next.

With pencil in hand

2005-08-26T08:58:00.000-04:00

I haven’t been out taking pictures this week. I keep seeing on The Weather Network that it’s going to rain so I leave my camera at home. Plus I keep forgetting to download the pictures that are currently on it to my computer. Next week I’ll have to be more on the ball.

In the mean time I’ve been painting a picture for a Video Game board that I travel to. It turned out pretty good seeing as I don’t normally paint in this style. It’s all good practice. I’ve also been working on learning to make video games with a program called Game Maker 6. It’ll all going great and it’s lots of fun but the tutorials made buy the guy that wrote the program aren’t the best and are some times confusing plus he leaves out information. Ah well, I’ll fumble through it.

I’m still sketchbookless at the moment and now I’m GameBoyless as well as my GBA SP is on the blink. It would seem that in a design flaw in the system the port that you use for the recharge cord is also the headphone jack and because of that it gets more wear and tear then normal to the point that it can no longer hold a connection. The result is that I can no longer charge my GBA SP. That sucks balls. Now I guess I’ll have to start saving for a Nintendo DS. It seems to be the next logical step at the moment.

Maybe I’ll write Nintendo a letter and see if they’ll give me a rebate or something on a DS. Wouldn’t hurt ^_^

The unphotographical building photographed.

2005-08-16T08:32:00.000-04:00

Well, yesterday I finally got some time to go take some pictures. I had originally decided to go west of my office building and take pictures there, but seeing as how I needed new sketch book after leaving my current one (plus my book bag) at my brother in laws house in the dirty Shwa (Oshawa, ON) I decided to venture in to downtown Montreal. I remember passing an art supplies store one day when I was downtown so during my lunch I hopped a subway and went looking for it again. Well that was easier said then done. I got off at the wrong stop thus passing the store and so I spent the lunch time wandering around looking for it. Ah well, I was able to get some pretty cool pictures of the core of Montreal.

Also on the this trip I was able to get pictures of that building that gave me such a headache last time. Seeing as how I was very determined to take a picture of that building and with some new acquired copyright law info that a friend gave me I was more then ready to take on the security guard. I walked up to the building, pointed my camera and “click”… nothing. I walked around to the other side and did the same. Again nothing. I was really expecting someone to come running out of the building yelling at me to delete my photo’s and burn my camera. To be honest I was a little disappointed too. I kind of liked getting all agitated about the whole situation. Oh well, all’s well that ends well I guess. And to that I present a photo suggested by a friend here at work…

On a plus side (add to the plus side of not having to go to building jail I guess) I found out that my camera does have an aperture setting of sorts. In the menu there is a “Exposure Compensation” feature and in there you can adjust the amount of light the camera will take in. It’s kind of cumbersome to have to go in to the menu option and adjust it every time but it’s better then nothing. So now I get to play around with that on my camera and see what I can do. I guess if it doesn’t work out too well I can always stick to Photoshop ^_^

Throw'n in the towel

2005-08-02T08:36:00.000-04:00

Okay, so after more then a week of trying to call the admin of the 1250 Boulevard Rene-Levesque I haven given up. She’s never in and mix in the fact I don’t have a phone on my desk so I have to wait for the meeting room to be empty so I can use the bloody phone and you have one big I disappointment cake. I still want to call her, but it’s a little late now. The happened last week so I’m sure she’ll think I’m a little crazy when I call to question why I can’t take a picture of her building. But I wouldn’t say I’m down and out yet. I’m still going to take a picture of the building one day. My co-workers think I’ll get shot down by the guards while I think that next time I won’t see a guard anywhere. We’ll have to wait and see. Till then, I have some other photos to share. These where taken around Rosemont Station in Montreal during a lunch time. It was overcast when they where taken so they’re kind of dark. Some days the weather just won’t work with ya I guess. I should also get around to posting more train peeps sometime soon as well.

Randy vs The Building: Round 1

2005-07-26T09:06:00.000-04:00

Today my day started very differently then most others. Let me explain. As we all know in the past few weeks I’ve decided to take up some amateur photography. Nothing fancy, just me and my 2 mega pixel easy share camera. I’ve taken pictures of flowers, signs, bikes and other such subjects. Well today, I on my way to work, I decide to get off at Lucien-L'Allier and take pictures of buildings in the area before continuing to work. I don’t get to wander around downtown so I though that this would be fun for me and I’ll get to see some great Montreal architecture.

I started right out side the Bell Center, walked a little bit and took a picture of 1250 Boulevard Rene-Levesque as it pointed up to the morning sky. It was then that I was approached by a security guard. He then asks me if I had just taken a picture of the building. I said that I did. He told me that I wasn’t allowed to do that because there are a lot of movies are shot in front of this building and that the building was copyrighted. He then tells me that if I want to take pictures of the building I have to get permission and to delete my pictures. He was very nice about it and I did what I was asked as I didn’t want any trouble before work. I didn't want to end up in building jail and have to call my wife to bail me out. I’ve never heard such a thing. I wasn’t allowed to take the picture because the building was copyrighted and I had to get permission. I can only imagine the hassle that I would get if I was to try and contact the proper people about taking a personal picture of the building. Do they stop the tourists from taking pictures of this building as I’m told that it’s a nice attraction being one of the tallest buildings in Montreal? How would they possible police something like this in the city as I’m sure that building has it’s good side snapped buy lot’s of people everyday. How can they stop people from doing this? Is it even legal?

Now, I'm new to the city by most standards. I moved here from a small town in Ontario for a job 2.5 years ago and since then I’ve had to learn the do’s and don’t of this new city/province, usually the hard way. But this tops my list of hard times the city has given me. It’s unfortunate too because I’m going to tell my friends and family from Ontario about the building you can’t photograph and they’ll all agree with me (my co-workers already do) that it’s quite possibly the stupidest thing they’ve heard and as a result it will make Montreal look poorly in thier eyes. All because a security officer stopped me from taking pictures of, what I though, was a very nice piece of down town Montreal that I would have liked to share with my family. It’s a shame that this happened as it just makes me more frustrated with the city when it’s not really the city’s fault.

This could have happened anywhere and I would still be equaly as angry. So angry in fact that I've already written a "Letter to the Editor" of The Gazette. I hope it get printed. I know that I'm going to call the building owners/marketing people or who ever I have to to get an answer as to why tourists can't take pictures of this building. Depending on how retarded this get's I might even go to different media sources. Weather or not people will isten to me I don't know. I just know I want to make myself heard on this incident.

Experiment

2005-07-20T08:20:00.000-04:00

So the other day I took our camera to work and took pictures on my trip in, around the building where I work and the trip home again. The moment I started taking pictures I instantly found that I was wishing for a better camera. Ours has no zoom, no close up feature… actually it’s completely void of features at all. I can ether take a picture or shoot 30 sec of video. That’s it. My camera pulls no punches, it’s just a straight up camera. Actually, I can take pictures with or with out the flash… so I guess that’s a feature. Only my camera gets lazy and keeps the shutter open way too long when the flash is off and the result is blurry pictures every time. The only work around I could find is to put my finger over the flash so I would only be using the natural light (it was a bit over cast yesterday). Here’s a quick bit of info for people. Even though the flash on your camera goes off for a mico second it’s extremely hot and I would have to wait to avoid scorching my finger.

All in all it went pretty well. I had an idea of on my lunch hour hopping the Metro (that’s what they call the subway here in Montreal which can be confusing because they also have a grocery store called Metro “I’m going to Metro on the Metro”) and traveling to some other stop and taking pictures there for an hour. But my back wasn’t in the best of shape for some reason so I called it off. I’ll try again next week.

Yeah, so this is turning out to be a fun little project. Snapping pictures on my lunch and drawing people on the train (I have more of those to post soon too) will keep me busy for a while me thinks. Now I just have to get a better camera.

Click!

2005-07-18T09:36:00.000-04:00

Along with deciding to draw more I’ve started to lean towards taking photos. Mostly because I read SushiCam and the fellow there takes fabulous pictures of Japan. Now, I before this weekend I was in the mind set of “Why should I start to take pictures, Montreal isn’t nearly as exotic as Japan and so my photo’s won’t be as good”. But if that where true then photography wouldn’t really exist unless in Japan. So I decided to take our little 2 mega pixel Kodak Easy Share at snap a few images while we where down home in Belleville Ontario this weekend. I’ve posted the best of the ones I took to share with the three or so people the read this.

So it would seem that I’m filling my world with more art related projects. I actually find that I’m wishing I had the camera with me all the time so I snap pictures on my way to work. Maybe this week I’ll see if my wife needs the camera and if not scam it for the day. I’m already finding though that I wish I had a better camera. The one we have, which works just fine and takes great pictures as it’s the framing you use when taking a picture, not the camera it self, is a pretty bare bones camera. I find that I want to zoom in on subjects which is some thing our current camera doesn’t do. You have to walk up and practically stand on the object you wish to snap and then you’ll probably be too close and the photo will be kinda fuzzy. I should get use to taking photos and practice my framing before move’n up to a fancier camera though. Oh well, all in due time I guess.

Would it kill ya to smile?

2005-07-07T09:27:00.000-04:00

Okay, I have some more train peeps for who ever wants to see them. I'm guessing that most people don't realize just how grumpy they look on the train. Now, I don't expect them to sit there with Joker type smiles... that would just be creepy, but man, the vast majority have the most sour pusses on, you'd think they where expecting to have a bad day. Yet another reason I hope people don't ask to see my drawings. I doubt most would be flattered to see them selves looking so unhappy. Or maybe it's just a big commentary as to how we live our lives. Maybe I'm drawing people how they truly feel when no one is looking. No front, no mask, just the real deal.

I wonder how I look when no one is looking...

Train Peeps

2005-06-30T09:43:00.000-04:00

I’ve recently come to the realization that I don’t draw enough. Which is rather odd when I think about it because I have an art based job. There lies the twist. Where my job is in the art field, I rarely get good chances to draw for work. Most jobs can be done right in the computer thus skipping the whole pencil to paper aspect of it. Anyway, I don’t draw nearly enough and that scares me because should I slack off long enough to loose my skills entirely then I’m not sure what I could do to support myself. I’m not even close to being pretty enough to get by on my looks. So, I decided to take action and started drawing people on the train in to work. I generally play my GBA but at the moment I’ve exhausted my selection of games (Mega Man Zero 3 being my latest conquest) so it would seem that this would be the best time to start this little project/hobby before I get distracted again.

Drawing people on the train is a bit of a challenge as I don’t really want to get caught by the subject. There is also the fear of some one coming up and saying “What are you drawing? Can I see?” which would probably result in me slumping down in to my seat hugging my sketchbook and quietly saying “um… no... not really”. Luckily, most people are sleeping or too involved in reading to notice me scrawling down their features in my book. The results turned out to be pretty good for not having drawn an actual person, face or otherwise, in a long time. I just generally make up the faces when I draw and the result is a lot of my people looking the same. I know where the muscles are in the face (mostly) but putting them all together in a variety of ways to created different faces has always escaped me. After only one day I’m starting to see the different ways the face muscles can be grouped, pulled and sagged. It’s great and lots of fun so far.

My train ride in is 50 min long and since I get on one of the earlier stops I usually have to wait for more people to get on. Today was kind of frustrating as most people sat down in the direction the train was heading in which meant I could have drawn a lot of the backs of peoples heads (which I probably do someday), but later on down the track more got on just waiting to be jotted down. Once I got in to the city I planned on getting on the Metro (subway) and play more GBA, but I decided against it. Drawing on the subway will provide more of a challenge I thought. It’s more crowded so I wouldn’t have the luxury of drawing someone way down on the end of the car with out getting noticed, but more importantly the people would be getting on and off more frequently. My drawing exercise has just turned in to speed drawing and things are getting interesting. I now have to quickly put down a rough head and little tick marks for the eyes, nose and mouth and block out the hair before the person gets to their stop. Once I’ve got that done I can go back and put more details in before… hey… wait! Damn… now I just have to quickly finish this by memory. It’s a fun and an added twist to the trip.

Here’s today’s “train peeps”. I’ll try and post these as often as I can for the 2 or 3 people that actually read this. On a follow up, here’s the coloured version of the two fat guys picture I did before. I decided to just use flat colours with no shading. Not bad and my friend seems to like it. It’ll go along with the mascot type character he wanted for he business, which I also drew up.

And with that… here are the pictures.

But I don't like sushi

2005-06-13T10:22:00.000-04:00

Okay, as of late I've been hooked on this new site/blog called Sushi Cam. It basically an almost daily writing a North American guy who live in Japan with his wife and the adventures they have. He takes picture and posts them and then someone like me reads and sees what life would be like over there. I'm sure they're the dullest findings to anyone else who live there but to someone like me they are truly things to see and experience. I relish reading about squid ink pizza, obscenely small parking spaces, toilets from the future and just the general everyday goings on over there.

I would truly love to go and see it all myself. I dream about seeing the Japanese adds light up the streets. Wandering from store to store and seeing goods that aren’t made over here. Going to temples and seeing the Japanese culture mix in with every day life, seeing the small towns and villages. It would be wonderful. I don't speak a word of Japanese so I don't know how I would communicate nor do I like sushi so I would have to live off of what ever I ate before the trip. I have a friend that went to Japan for a spell, I try to get info out of her on the trip from time to time but it's not something I want to pester her about. I don't think I could live there, but to visit I think would be wonderful.

Until that day I'll just read on and dream.

A world of talents

2005-06-08T13:05:00.000-04:00

So I draw a bit too. I dabble in it as one might say... A friend has asked me to draw a picture of him and his other friend for a logo of sorts of a business they're starting. I said sure, I have no problems with that. It keeps me drawing and the topic is a nice change from what I usually draw (which isn't always work friendly). I don't usually draw pictures of others, I'm rarely happy with them, but this is looking good so far. Maybe I'll post the progress of this here so I can fill up space and such.

Huzzah! Drawing is fun. ^_^

two fat guys

It's a what?

2005-06-07T11:53:00.000-04:00

Blog? What the heck?

I'm really just giving this this blog thing a shot. Everybody seem to have one for one reason or another and since I'm all about jumping on wagons I figured, why not. So what does one write in here anyway? After perusing around other "blogs" I've seen that others use it in a variety of ways. Such as...

on line projects - http://postsecret.blogspot.com/
fictitious personalities - http://darthside.blogspot.com/
personal journals - http://romseyredhead.blogspot.com/
on line guide - http://ct-wedding-guide.blogspot.com/
artistic expresion - http://riotgothicgrrrl.blogspot.com/
spam - http://easycredit1d.blogspot.com/

But it still doesn't really answer my question as to why have a Blog? It seems to be a great way to share information if used correctly. I really don't buy the whole on line journal bit of it though. I thought journals where to be kept secret, a place where you can put down your inner most thoughts. It would seems like "blogging" has taking that notion and stood it on it's head. I guess in my mind I wonder... who really cares about what I have to say. Yet here I am trying this blog thing out before it goes out of style.

I still don't know what to write about.

Friends will probably see this so there's no point on blasting to the rest of the world secrets I wouldn't normally tell them. Odd this blog thing is. I guess we'll see where it takes me...