Dandelion

Another photo from Elk Island National Park. I really need to buy a macro lens -- I'd like to get into the whole macro photography thing, but neither of my lenses are fantastic for this purpose. Still, this photo turned out alright.

A Lively Weekend

It's been busy, so I haven't had a chance to work on heraldk.ca anymore since I launched it. Don't worry, it'll be updated! This weekend I got to be part of a real special weekend for my friend and colleague, Darse Billings. He got married this weekend, and I was proud to be one of the select people he chose to include in part of his special day. He decided to essentially elope, and the only reason I was included was I was the photographer for the event. So at the ceremony, there was just 6 people. The happy couple: Darse and Alexandra, the marriage commissioner: June, the witnesses: Dr and Dr Buro, and the photographer: yours truly. The ceremony was quick, although that was partially due to the weather which didn't entirely cooperate. Darse was pretty happy though -- he loves the rain. The ceremony went off with no problems and the happy couple shared their kiss and then we all dashed off to June's car to finish the paperwork.

By the time the paperwork was over the rain had already quieted down, so we drove down to the museum grounds hoping that the rain would subside for us to get some photos in. It turned out we were in luck, and we joined the FIVE other weddings in a competition to find good scenic spots to get photos. I think we did alright, and you'll probably be seeing quite a few of my photos get posted to Flickr (that is, if Darse and Alexandra are okay with that). There were quite a few rather good photos, in my humble opinion.

After the photo shoot, I picked up Diane and we met up with the rest of the wedding crowd at the Blue Pear. The six of us enjoyed an incredible 5 course meal. Each course was amazing. I felt kinda funny taking pictures of my food, but it was good enough that I'm gonna want those photos to remember. I just justify it by saying that Darse and Alexandra will also want to remember their food... right? I took several more photos of the couple and the rest of the guests throughout dinner. All the while, really really enjoying my 50mm f/1.4 canon lens that can take some pretty fantastic low light photos. Just about any other lens would've had issues, but this one had no problems with the ISO set to just 800 for most of the photos. Hooray!

After dinner, our next stop was a games party at my supervisor, Jonathan Schaeffer's house. By the time Diane and I got there, Darse had already broken the news that he had decided to go to Ireland ... and that he happened to have gotten married earlier in the day. He brought four magnums of champagne to celebrate - and when Diane and I came in the door we were passed glasses and quickly had them filled. As usual, the games party was lots of fun, but because we got there late I didn't get a chance to play many games. I did play a new game called Ingenious, which Darse had found. It was pretty fun. I might have to pick up a copy of that (even though I already have too many games that I don't play).

So it was a pretty fun, and eventful day. Congratulations to Darse and Alexandra again! It was an honour to be part of your special day.

Heraldk

Canoeing?

It's a pretty grey day out there, so maybe that's why this canoe isn't on the water. This is at Elk Island National Park, about an hour's drive away from Edmonton.

Mountains

I love the mountains. I wish I could be out there more often than I get there. A couple times a year is just not enough I think. This particular shot was taken from the window on the plane back to Edmonton. I think I'm finally through most of the photos that I want to share from Vancouver. There might be a couple fireworks photos still, but other than that, I'm moving on to new stuff.

Escher Mural

In Vancouver, we came across this amazing art in a random alleyway. I'm not too sure if it's graffiti or if it's a mural. At any rate, since Escher is my favourite artist, I was pretty happy to see this.

Tall

This is a guy on stilts handing out free goodies to people in the crowd awaiting the start of the celebration of lights fireworks contest. Diane and I got there 3 hours early and already the beach was swarming with people.

Aquarium Watching

This is a selective crop of one of my photos from the Vancouver aquarium. The photo as a whole looked pretty cool, but mostly due to this section where the sunlight falls into the water. By cropping out the random people, I think I made this photo quite a bit more powerful. Just having the two kids watching the action inside the aquarium is pretty cool I think. What do you think?

Waves

The waves roll onto wreck beach to wash away my footprints. I actually really like this photo. I'm not too sure how to describe why. Maybe you can help me.

Glow

On one of the nights in Vancouver as we walked back to the bed and breakfast we stayed at, this was the scene. I'm a tad disappointed I didn't get a vantage point on the sunset with the sun just a bit higher in the sky than this, but I think this still turned out fairly well.

Distant Mountains

This view was a short distance away from the entrance to the chip and putt golf course next to Stanley Park in Vancouver. I'm really happy with how this photo turned out - the distant mountains framed by greenery and the lovely warm glow on the tree trunk really works well I think.

Colourful Fish

This is a pretty decent shot of one of the large tanks of colourful fish that you can see at the Vancouver aquarium. It's a bit grainy due to the high ISO I took the photo at, but I think it's pretty cool to see so much colour in one photo.

Wood Raven

This carving is located in the museum of anthropology on the UBC campus in Vancouver. Diane and I went there almost by accident -- we didn't really know it was there, but happened to be on campus and found it while wandering around. It was definitely worth it. We got an awesome tour of the museum, which was included in the price of admission. There was a lot of interesting stuff, and I'm very glad we went.

This sculpture was carved out of a piece of wood that was assembled by gluing pieces of wood together. It is a magnificent looking sculpture.

Otter

Here is the obligatory otter picture. Obligatory because these creatures are too damn cute for their own good. In this photo, I particularly like the texture and colour of the water.

heraldk.ca Launch

I've spent some time working here tonight on a new main page for my http://heraldk.ca domain. It will be a blog format and will contain the more content intensive posts that used to be on this blog. Now this blog will be a place for just my personal activities and poker stories. For more, visit http://heraldk.ca. Heraldk

Camping Weekend

This weekend a group of us went out to Elk Island National Park to get some camping in before the summer came to a close. It was a rather enjoyable weekend that included a short excursion back to the city to attend a BBQ at my Uncle's place. We got in a quick hike on Saturday morning, but mostly we kind of sat around for awhile and relaxed in front of the campfire. We played some cards and some boggle, but other than that we mostly just enjoyed the wonderful outdoors. There was a bit of an adventure though with my car. You see, on Sunday morning, Marc discovered that my tire was looking a little flat. A couple of hours later, it was starting to sag down to the rim. Oops! Turns out I had run over a bit of metal, likely at one of the many construction sites that I passed through. Doh. Well, instead of fiddling with putting on the spare tire and limping back to Edmonton, Diane had a handy AMA membership that we used to get a tow back into Edmonton.

It was a rather full weekend! After getting back, I was super tired so I went to bed super early: like 9:30, and didn't get up this morning until eight in the morning. Yay uber sleep! All in all, a good weekend and a good chance to get into the outdoors again and enjoy some camping.

Heraldk

Metro on the Train

I am a frequent LRT traveler. In Edmonton, we have a relatively short light rail transit system that runs from the North East end of the city where I live, South and West to the University area. This is a great connection for me. A train ride to the University, once I get on the train, takes about 20 minutes. This is a great deal for me considering driving would take at least 35 minutes. Not to mention all of the parking, and gas, and maintenance costs. Plus the lack of dealing with crazy Edmontonian drivers during rush hour is a big plus. There is a down side however. I have to deal with various people on the train and around the train system. One of the reasons I bring up the train system is the people who it is their exciting duty of passing out the relatively new metro newspaper to anyone and everyone who will take one. They stand, at the choke points in the train stations, lurking to pounce on unsuspecting train goers to pass on their gigantic piles of free papers.

Ordinarily, I don't mind people who give out free stuff in the train stations. If it's something I'm mildly interested in, I might even take a copy of whatever they are handing out because it might hold some value to me. One time, Diane and I even got handed a bowl of soup! It wasn't very good, but it was something to talk about for sure.

The problem with the Metro people is that the people passing them out are increasingly pushy, and they are there both in the morning and the afternoon so they pass out papers to you on your way to work and on your way home. One particularly pushy woman stands at the bottom of the LRT stairs and almost forces a paper at you. You have to actually change your planned path to avoid this woman. Maybe I'm overreacting, but c'mon! Is it really that damn important that you need to get a newspaper in everyone's hands?

One of the things that angers me about this activity is that so many of these papers get left on the train. The litter left over is extremely unappealing. I've seen several times where the driver of the LRT walks down the train picking up all the loose papers he can see and dumps them unceremoniously into the nearest garbage can. Great ... now those papers are getting dumped in a land fill instead of being recycled. Yuck.

This marketing campaign has lasted a couple of months, and apparently shows no sign of stopping. Every additional day I see these people I feel like swearing at them to stop doing it. I know it's not really their fault -- they probably have a quota of papers to get rid of each day. Still, I hate it, and wish they had put a stop to it a week after they started.

Heraldk

The New heraldk.ca

Welcome! I have decided that it is more than time to put some work into this website again. As part of this work, I'm re-introducing the root level heraldk.ca as a new blog-style format. In it, I'll be posting my rants and thoughts about things. At first, it'll probably be fairly sparse, but I will fill it in over time (hopefully fairly frequently) with my latest rants. I hope the quality will improve over time and that you find some use out of it.

One of the reasons for this is I want to make a distinction between my personal diary style blog entries and some of the more content heavy posts. As well, I want to keep this blog free of poker related content so that I can once again serve up some google ads. The reason they've been lacking is because the policy for google ads does not allow you to place ads on sites with gambling related content. By separating these, I can keep this content separate -- plus many of my random readers probably don't really care that I won $25 in my most recent session of poker.

So I hope you enjoy my new site, and the forthcoming new look for both heraldk.ca and my personal blog.

Heraldk

Seahorse

For some reason, all my photos of the seahorses at the Vancouver aquarium all look like they are sad. I think they were looking for food, and that's how they have to move their bodies to see the food and eat it.

Relaxation

This is a scene from the free part of the Dr. Sun Yat Sen chinese garden in Vancouver. It is a beautiful area, and it was a beautiful day when we were there too! I love this photo. There's so much at play here. The reflection on the water is one. Another is the interplay between the beauty and the serenity of the chinese garden with the pond in the middle which is then intruded upon by the city buildings in the background. But those buildings are way behind and only intrude quietly on the scene. Hope you like this photo!

Jelly

I think this was one of my favourite areas in the Vancouver Aquarium because it's just so picture friendly. So many cool things to take photographs of! Then again, most of the aquarium is that way ...

I can't remember what this jellyfish is called though :\