After the woman pictured in yesterday's photo finished her dance, this gentleman and another one got up to do another dance. Their costumes are really quite amazing.
Unfortunately, this is the best shot I was able to get. When they were dancing, they had their heads down almost the whole time and my shots really didn't look very good.
One of the groups that performed at the university of alberta open house this year was a local native chapter. Apparently, this is the first time they've performed some of their traditional dances at an open house, and it was pretty cool to see. Their costumes are quite elaborate, and they were in constant motion which made taking photos a bit challenging.
I helped work the Computer Science booth at the University of Alberta open house this year. We're in a big push to try and get students to join our department, so we had a lot of people in our booth and a lot of cool demos. The event was a pretty good success I think.
I had an urge last night to play some poker for the first time in quite awhile. The last time I had played any poker at all was in August when I needed to clear some money at Party so I could cash out. So I logged into my trusty PSO account to check on the latest promotions and found 4 promos that I haven't done yet. I chose Carbon poker because I could get the highest amount ($120 worth) of PSO points. I went through the typical steps to start the promo and sat down for a couple hour session. There wasn't a lot of action at the $50 NL tables, so I stepped up to $100NL, a limit I haven't played since January or February. I just opened two tables, partially because it was a higher limit than I had played recently and partially to get used to the new interface. The first thing I noticed is that the software seemed very responsive and slick -- it's certainly better software than many sites have. The second thing I notice? There's an All-In button in a primary spot on the screen. This is a one-click-put-all-your-chips-in-the-pot button. Man do I ever hope I don't make a bad misclick with that button!
I got off to a fast start early on. Within a couple rotations at a six-max table, I get dealt pocket aces. I make a standard raise and get called. The board comes up 655 with 2 diamonds. I make a healthy bet, and the guy across from me pushes allin. I call and he shows JJ and I take down almost a full stack!
Another hand a little later, I flop 3 clubs holding the king of clubs. I make a bet and get raised a small amount so I call and turn a fourth club giving me the 2nd nut flush. My opponent promptly shoves and I call - he shows Q6 of clubs, and I win 3/4 of a stack there.
Later on, I'm up over two stacks and get to see a free flop with 64 and flop trips. Unfortunately, I run into a guy who had A6, so I lost a bunch in that hand. I probably lost more than I should have, although it was tough to fold to the guy's river bet.
I made back a bunch of money with KJs when I flopped a flush draw and turned the nut flush to beat my opponent's trip aces. That got me back into the 2.5 stack profit range.
Late in my session, I flopped top pair of tens with TJo. I bet the flop and get called and then turn two pair. I bet again but get raised so I just call and the river is another J to give me a full house. I promptly push and get called by a guy who flopped trips on the flop. Whoops! Got lucky there.
All in all, I finished my session up $300, and a little less than 1/4 done my PSO promotion. Not too shabby for not playing in a couple months! Hopefully the rest of the session goes as well!
Heraldk
Andrew found a dog early on in the afternoon. The dog was very good about getting a bunch of attention from the boys.
Andrew looks pretty cute when examining a feather.
Shayna's kids sure are cute subjects for photos. Here's Brandon going down the spiral slide.
This is one of the buildings in Rundle Park. I rather like the reflection - particularly the blue and yellow colours!
There wasn't a ton of wildlife at Rundle Park when we were running around with Shayna and her kids, but there was some water fowl to be seen. It was kind of fun to play with Shayna's new 85mm prime lens since it has a longer focal length than any lens I have so far. Someday I'll fix that.
Last weekend I got the chance to go out taking photos with Shayna. She just got a brand new Canon 40D which is a pretty sweet camera. We walked around Rundle park with her boys, Andrew and Brandon, and I got several pretty good photos of them. Here, the boys are throwing rocks into the lake with a third boy who joined them.
The University of Alberta is a beautiful place to be in the fall. There are a lot of trees and when they turn colour you totally notice. This is one scene on the UofA campus fairly recently. I was going to go participate in the turkey trot - but couldn't go by here without taking a photo.
Before I move on to the next photo session, I think I need to catch up on a few other highlight photos from awhile ago. This is the sunset Diane and I saw before heading back out to our campsite at Elk Island. We had just come out from a family BBQ at my Uncle's place. The sky was gorgeous, and I totally had to get my camera out. Enjoy!
I'm really liking this Sepia thing. This is at the same stop on our tour of the farm as the last one... a wooden shack next to a soybean field. Again, I think the sepia is way better than the original.
One of Diane's relatives has a farm which we stopped off at on the way home. This was the first stop - a look over some soybean fields and this old abandoned farm house that is quickly being reclaimed by the land. The house is in pretty rough shape, but it was cool to walk around in it and snap a few photos. I kind of like the sepia effect on this photo.
I'm not going to give my predictions for the upcoming NHL season, although I suppose it has already started officially since there's been a couple of games have been played over in London. I am, however, going to rant a little about the predictions of other "experts". It seems that hockey experts agree that the Oilers have no shot at making the playoffs this year. I have one thing to say: why do these so called "experts" always sell the Oil short? It doesn't seem all that long ago when the Oilers were pushing for the 8th and final playoff spot a couple years ago. They were a team that was fighting it's own potential. I knew the team had a lot of talent, but it seemed that every couple of games, they'd lose a you-should-win-this-game type scenario and they'd slip back a notch. They did it, but barely. In the first round that year, they were up against the high powered Detroit Red Wings. Everyone wrote Edmonton off and had them down in out quickly. Surprise, surprise when the Oil suddenly became the team they were capable of becoming and took down not only Detroit, but San Jose, Anaheim, and almost Carolina en route to the stanley cup final.
Last year was a painful year for the average Oiler fan. The team struggled in mediocrity for most of the season and then got hit by a terrible injury streak that took most of the regulars out of the lineup. As a result, the team skidded to a halt and failed to win most of their remaining games.
The offseason was a high-drama period where the Oilers made a large number of moves and almost completely re-tooled. Powered by the new blue-liners of Pitkanen and Souray, they have far more power on defence than they had last year. Penner adds some size and some scoring punch and Sanderson is a wily veteran who should contribute as well. The real exciting thing for this upcoming season though is the chance for some of the youth to shine. The Oilers have several young players, in addition to Ales Hemsky, who all have a shot of hitting it big this year. These guys include Gagner, Nilsson, Brodziak, Pouliot, and Cogliano. To me, this is super exciting ... and I have a hard time believing that the Oilers are going to have trouble making the playoffs.
But lets take a look at what the experts think. One of the oft-quoted stats from last year is +/-. I'm not sure how they can compare player's +/- stats correctly when these numbers are so very biased on the team they were playing for. For example, Souray and Pitkanen both played on teams that didn't make the playoffs last year. This typically means that those teams got scored on more often than they scored (duh). So take two important defencemen who play big minutes for their teams and put them on clubs that are losing. What happens to their plus minus? It plummets. Whoop-dee-doo. I'm not saying the statistic is meaningless. I'm just saying that you need to make sure you keep in mind what you're trying to compare.
A lot of analysis seems to compare how a team has changed from the previous year. Unfortunately, this also is a problem. How do the experts know that the "winners" of the free agency craziness (the rangers and the flyers) are going to gel and mesh the star players they signed? Who's to say that teams with a bunch of young talent are going to not mesh and start winning games? The past doesn't necessarily tell the future, folks - especially when so much has changed from last season.
One of the things I think many people forget is that the new collective bargaining agreement is giving teams some level ground to play on. It's not completely level, that's for sure, but teams are much more evenly matched than they used to be. Remember the Oiler's heyday way back when they were winning cups every year? That team was so stacked that you had to expect great things from them. Fast forward to today - there are far fewer teams that looked that stacked in comparison. Maybe the penguins look a bit awesome at the moment ... but the division from them to the next closest team is far smaller than for the Oilers back in the day. The salary cap helps balance out the skill players among the teams, and as a result, nearly any team has a chance to do well enough to hit the playoffs. So I don't think last year means nearly as much as the experts seem to think. I also don't think they have ever given the Oilers enough credit.
So I think the Oilers have a good chance of doing well this season, and we'll just have to see how it turns out.
Go Oilers! Heraldk
Alright, this is the last of the photos from this particular sunset. Hope you liked them!
I just can't get over how awesome these photos turned out. It was totally worth the chilly walk balk to the hotel to get this set of photos. This is definitely one of my favourites from the shoot. It's just so calm and beautiful.
More than a few of my photos from this sunset really turned out, so I'm going to share a few more. Here's some trees that are silhouetted in front of the lovely sunset/reflection on the lake. It was actually rather odd - the tree were pretty much dead. The salt water is likely not good for them! So I gather that the lake must've risen since there was quite a few trees in this situation, plus there was some playground equipment that was half in the water.
After dinner, Diane and I walked back along the lake and were treated to an absolutely gorgeous sunset. There are going to be several images in this sequence, but I think this is one of the best ones. I hope you like it!
At lake Manitou, Diane and I continued walking along the lake towards dinner. It was getting later in the day, and the shadows started getting longer. So this is Diane's and my shadows looking out over the lovely lake scenery.