We Saw a Chicken …

Author: scruss

  • Renfest ’04

    Hawk Landing
    (links to my Renfest gallery.)

    I went to the Ontario Renfest twice this weekend. On Saturday it was with Chris, Andi, Blair & Norvin (who was taking a little time off from promoting Zenon Membrane Bioreactor technology). Yes, there was merriment, in both liquid and meat form. Oh, and Zoltan the Adequate was indeed more than adequate.

    I went again on Sunday, after picking up Catherine from the airport. We mostly went to see the owl at the Canadian Raptor Conservancy flight display.

    I think we’ll definitely go again next year. Huzzah!

  • biggest vee-hickle ever

    huge_lesabre.jpg
    Seems it’s a big weekend down at the rental lot. This Buick LeSabre — approximately the size of Clackmannanshire, for Scottish readers — is all they had left.

    Oh well, at least I’ll be stylin’ on the way to the Rennfest, and at the airport to meet Catherine. Or, since it’s about the size of a Zil, I guess I could be Stalin.

  • Would you like baby’s-breath with that?

    Drive-Thru Florist, Burlington
    Somewhat alarmingly, Burlington has the first drive-thru florist in Canada.

  • Monkeys

    jill_greenberg-gabe_the_gibbon.jpg
    Gabe the Gibbon — image copyright Jill Greenberg.
    First mentioned in The Walrus, and now picked up by BoingBoing, Jill Greenberg took studio portraits of monkeys.

  • Talkin’ Energy with Darrin and Paul

    darrin_and_paul.jpg
    Darrin Mitchell & Paul Gipe

    I had the pleasure of finally meeting Darrin Mitchell, of TalkEnergy.com, at OSEA‘s office in downtown Toronto. He was in talking to Paul Gipe, who gave Darrin a signed copy of his latest book, Wind Power: Renewable Energy for Home, Farm, & Business

  • Saving me the bother

    I was going to start documenting my experiences with the Nikon D70 and Linux on a wiki of my own, but it looks like there’s a better place to do it: the Digital Photography and Linux wiki.

    It’s slightly out of date, but we can fix that.

  • The Specialist

    cover illustration
    I think this is out of copyright in Canada now, so please enjoy The Specialist, by Charles Sale.

  • They put up a gas station at our wind turbine!

    Pump facia at hydrogen gas station, Ex Place
    Okay, so maybe it’s a hydrogen gas station for a demonstrator fuel cell car, but it’s still a big ugly gas station. I think it spoils the lines of the park in which the WindShare turbine is cited.

    More pictures here: http://scruss.com/gallery/wind

  • not particularly my bag

    Since I now have a big DSLR, as opposed to a subtle wee rangefinder, I need a new camera bag. I like the one I have, so I went to the manufacturer’s website.

    I knew that Crumpler was an odd company, but I wasn’t expecting demented music, a “Nerds” button which sprays poop over the screen, or animated chickens. The question is, would I trust my camera to these people? Could I trust it to anybody else?

  • One ridiculous vehicle

    One Ridiculous Vehicle
    One of these vehicles is a ridiculously unsafe vehicle that should never be allowed on the road. The other is a Speed Machine recumbent bicycle

  • Repeatedly stabbing myself in the eye with a hot poker

    s_OlympukesLight2.png
    … would be more fun than following the Olympics.

    Seriously, if there’s anyone out there who thinks that the Limping Games is anything other than a cash grab for synthetic hormone-enhanced automata, I’d like to meet them — and mock them repeatedly with “You sad old man!” delivered in a scornful faux-Cockney accent.

    Take the 400m race, for instance. If I stayed in exactly the same place, I’d be back where I started 43.18 seconds before the world record holder, and what’s more, I wouldn’t even be remotely out of breath. And we give medals to people who run round in circles? Jings!

    The above image is a glyph from the Olympukes Light free font from fontshop. It speaks to my condition.

  • UofT Solar Car

    UofT Solar Car
    I was very sad to hear that the UofT solar car crashed, killing the driver. I didn’t know Andrew Frow, but I knew some of the Blue Sky Solar Racing team from the sustainability/renewable energy project around UofT.

  • Sigh …

    Catherine’s away on her travels until the 22nd, so I’m on my tod. The future holds moping and lots of take-out koththu roti.

    I am doing my best to fill my schedule; there’s lunch and tabla on Sunday at the Harbourfront, then next weekend it’s the Ontario Renaissance Festival with Norvin & Blair.

  • tee hee, they have no idea

    “A new deep-fried Scottish delicacy has created a miniature moral panic among the UK’s diet-cops.”

    What gets me is that no-one commenting on this knows (or has worked out) what the name of this snack means to the average Glaswegian. Let’s just say it’s rude. Very rude. You’ve probably received at least five items of spam about this subject today.

  • I believe in bugs

    minimantis.jpg
    I saw my first in-the-wild preying mantis today. It makes this place so much more exotic than Scotland.

  • gone digital

    I got rid of nearly all my film camera equipment yesterday. Digital was calling, and I was barely using what I had. To Burlington Camera, I traded in:

    • Cosina-Voigtländer Bessa R 35mm rangefinder outfit, comprising:
      • Bessa R 35mm rangefinder body
      • Ultron Aspherical 35mm-f/1.7 lens
      • Nokton Aspherical 50mm-f/1.5 lens
      • Apo Lanthar 90mm-f/3.5 lens
    • Pentacon Six TL outfit, comprising:
      • Pentacon Six TL MF SLR body
      • Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar MC 80mm-f/2.8 Lens
      • Pentacon Six TL WLF
      • Pentacon Six TL metered prism
      • Pentacon Auto extension tubes
    • Voigtländer Vitoret 110EL 110 camera outfit with matching V200 flash
    • Yashica Yashicamat MF TLR
    • Yashica Electro 35 GTN 35mm rangefinder camera
    • Olympus Stylus Epic Infiniti 35mm AF compact
    • Metz 20BC6 Flash

    …  all towards a Nikon D70. I like it a lot.

    There is some film equipment I kept, like the amazing 15mm f/4.5 SW Heliar lens. I even bought a Bessa L body from Cameraquest so I could keep using it with my Kaidan KiWi panoramic head. I also kept the Zero Image pinhole camera, as it’s too nice to sell.

    Coming back from the camera store, the taxi driver was an artist fae Balornock. I guess there’s a lot more people fae Balornock than in Balornock.

  • The Bert Richard Connection

    We were over at Cinders and Jules’s place last night. Jules said he used to hang out with Bert, a scary sculptor, while at Aberdeen art school.

    Turns out that this Bert is the very same Bert Richard, Dalmallyfest impresario and sweary words enthusiast, who was a frequent visitor to 165 Nithsdale Rd back when we lived there with Neil Martin.

    From Toronto to Dalmally; it’s a wee world.

  • broken up a ding dong

    Morose beardy trip-hoppers unrejoice; The Beta Band are splitting up.

  • cron, gone

    fresh sweet cron
    This is the sign that used to be at the farm on the corner of Steeles and Warden. If you go there now, it’s just a mini-mall. The geese that used to roost there will be confused.

    This sign is vaguely amusing if you know the famous Unix scheduling tool, cron.