Tuesday, November 8
Canada Day Pictures
Yes, I know it's kind of late to be posting Canada Day Pictures (it did happen like 5 months ago), but well - I tend to be lazy and kind of slow a getting things done.
This are a few pictures that I took of the fireworks display in Fredercton. While they aren't super great, considering I had no coordination with the people doing the show and it was my first real experiment with doing nighttime pictures, I don't think they came out too bad.
This are a few pictures that I took of the fireworks display in Fredercton. While they aren't super great, considering I had no coordination with the people doing the show and it was my first real experiment with doing nighttime pictures, I don't think they came out too bad.
Monday, November 7
Pictures From Newfoundland
Well, seeing as how I was home to Newfoundland in August, I felt it was finally time to post some of the pictures that I took while I was home. I really couldn't post them before this, as I didn't want to give people the impression that I am motivated and get things done quickly.
All of the pictures here are taken on my Canon Digital Rebel, either using the 18-55 mm kit lens or my 55-200 mm Canon USM lens. It's a nice camera, and well, I think I've managed to create a few ok pictures using it.
This is probably my favourite picture that I took while I was home. It was taken near the lighthouse in Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland; with the silhouette provided courtesy of my good friend Heather.
This one is a bit of coastline, also at Rocky Harbour (taken about 10-15 minutes before the previous picture). I still don't understand why myself (or anyone else for that matter) would trade a place like this for the bricks and asphalt of a big city like Edmonton, but well, it's too late to change my mind now.
This final picture was taken in Southern Arm. Personally, I just kind of liked the old rusted anchor leaning against the rock so I decided to take a picture of it. It probably should have had a slightly wider aperture so the background would have been blurred a bit more, but it's too late for that now.
Hopefully I will get around to posting something else soon (as in less than a month from now), but I make no guarantees. I have some more pictures that I will eventually put up, some of the Canada Day fireworks in Fredericton and some from my trip across the country, and well - eventually I hope to take some of Edmonton that I can put up.
All of the pictures here are taken on my Canon Digital Rebel, either using the 18-55 mm kit lens or my 55-200 mm Canon USM lens. It's a nice camera, and well, I think I've managed to create a few ok pictures using it.
This is probably my favourite picture that I took while I was home. It was taken near the lighthouse in Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland; with the silhouette provided courtesy of my good friend Heather.
This one is a bit of coastline, also at Rocky Harbour (taken about 10-15 minutes before the previous picture). I still don't understand why myself (or anyone else for that matter) would trade a place like this for the bricks and asphalt of a big city like Edmonton, but well, it's too late to change my mind now.
This final picture was taken in Southern Arm. Personally, I just kind of liked the old rusted anchor leaning against the rock so I decided to take a picture of it. It probably should have had a slightly wider aperture so the background would have been blurred a bit more, but it's too late for that now.
Hopefully I will get around to posting something else soon (as in less than a month from now), but I make no guarantees. I have some more pictures that I will eventually put up, some of the Canada Day fireworks in Fredericton and some from my trip across the country, and well - eventually I hope to take some of Edmonton that I can put up.
Saturday, October 1
Yes; I did make it to Edmonton
Well I haven't posted anything on here in a long time; with travelling/moving in the summer and starting my grad program at a new school I haven't really had a whole lot of time.
I did actually make it all the way to Edmonton, and so far I am enjoying my program - it is a lot of work (that would be mostly paper reading / synopsis writing for CMPUT 651) - but I guess thats the life of a grad student. You know I really think there is something wrong with my family, people aren't supposed to enjoy school as much as we seem to; probably why between me and my three brothers we have over 30 years of university, with two of us still going.
I do plan to eventually post some of the pictures that I took in Newfoundland and on my trip across.
Well this is enough for positive stuff - I need something to gripe about. I recently built a new small form factor computer - needed to spend the oil money on something. While the computer seemed to be good, I just over two weeks of having the computer my harddrive has already started to go bad - getting read errors and unable to reformat one (maybe both - didn't try to format the main partition) of the partitions. While it is not uncommon to get faulty parts, in particular harddrives, I was actually disapointed in this - I've had several seagate harddrives prior to this, all without any problems - but I guess eventually you have to hit a bad one.
I guess I will get to see how good Anitec's (www.anitec.ca) return process is; they have been excellent about things so far, answering questions, sending my a missing software disc express. Once I conact them and find out about replacement I will post again to let you know how it went; hopefully it will work out good and I'll need to find something else to complain about.
I did actually make it all the way to Edmonton, and so far I am enjoying my program - it is a lot of work (that would be mostly paper reading / synopsis writing for CMPUT 651) - but I guess thats the life of a grad student. You know I really think there is something wrong with my family, people aren't supposed to enjoy school as much as we seem to; probably why between me and my three brothers we have over 30 years of university, with two of us still going.
I do plan to eventually post some of the pictures that I took in Newfoundland and on my trip across.
Well this is enough for positive stuff - I need something to gripe about. I recently built a new small form factor computer - needed to spend the oil money on something. While the computer seemed to be good, I just over two weeks of having the computer my harddrive has already started to go bad - getting read errors and unable to reformat one (maybe both - didn't try to format the main partition) of the partitions. While it is not uncommon to get faulty parts, in particular harddrives, I was actually disapointed in this - I've had several seagate harddrives prior to this, all without any problems - but I guess eventually you have to hit a bad one.
I guess I will get to see how good Anitec's (www.anitec.ca) return process is; they have been excellent about things so far, answering questions, sending my a missing software disc express. Once I conact them and find out about replacement I will post again to let you know how it went; hopefully it will work out good and I'll need to find something else to complain about.
Sunday, May 15
Finished Undergrad and Cross Canada Trip
Well havn't posted in a while, so I thought I would make a short post.
I have finished my undergrad degree - with a pretty good final term I think (four A+s and an A-). The graducation ceremony (or Encaenia as UNB calls it) takes place the upcomming Saturday, so I'll get the first three letters (BCS in my case), only need a few more degrees an i'll catch up with the rest of my family.
As many people know I will be attending the University of Alberta in Edmonton in the fall to start a MSc in CS; I am planning on travelling by train and am intending to stop in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City (not in that order) along the way; if anyone has suggestions of places to visit in any (or all) of those cities let me know, as I've never been to Toronto or Montreal at all, and it was a long time ago that I was in Quebec City and Ottawa.
I have finished my undergrad degree - with a pretty good final term I think (four A+s and an A-). The graducation ceremony (or Encaenia as UNB calls it) takes place the upcomming Saturday, so I'll get the first three letters (BCS in my case), only need a few more degrees an i'll catch up with the rest of my family.
As many people know I will be attending the University of Alberta in Edmonton in the fall to start a MSc in CS; I am planning on travelling by train and am intending to stop in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City (not in that order) along the way; if anyone has suggestions of places to visit in any (or all) of those cities let me know, as I've never been to Toronto or Montreal at all, and it was a long time ago that I was in Quebec City and Ottawa.
Sunday, May 1
Mac OS X Tiger
Well I got the new version of Mac OS X (Tiger) yesterday, and installed it on my iBook. While I have noticed a few bugs (nothing terribly bad) I have to say that overall I'm very pleased. There are definite improvements in performance in particular with the new QuickTime and in the user interface.
The spotlight search features are really great, completely removing the need for launchers like QuickSilver - and it's good for finding things if your completely disorganized like me. One feature that a lot of people seem to be ignoring is Spotlights Smart Folders - I find this to be a really useful feature; allowing me to create folders that will contain all of the files related to one thing; also you can have the same file be in multiple places (it's actual location, and one or more smart folders).
The Dashboard is rather cool too, although a lot of the included widgets are not particularly useful - either because of being US only, or simply because they serve no real useful feature. One thing I would recommend to people with Tiger is to enable the Dashboard developers mode - this allows you to place Dashboard widgets both on the dashboard layer or on your regular desktop (always on top). To put dashboard in developers mode type the following at a console prompt
defaults write com.apple.Dashboard devmode YES
Then either log out and back in or restart the Dock with the following command
killall Dock
Then to move things back and forth between layers simply drag the widget and switch between the Dashboard layer and the regular desktop (F12 by default). This is one of my small complaints though - the choice of F12 for the default button to bring up the Dashboard is in my opinion a bad one, as this is used by Apple laptops for Ejecting a CD. While this can be re-mapped by the user they should have stuck with one of the keys that are not already used on all of their systems (F7 or F8); F1 through F6 and F12 are used for special functions by PowerBooks and iBooks, and F9 through F11 are used for Exposé.
While I have not run into any problems with outside software I wouldn't recommend using an of the lower level hacks (such as APE and it's modules) as it is likely to cause an unstable system.
The spotlight search features are really great, completely removing the need for launchers like QuickSilver - and it's good for finding things if your completely disorganized like me. One feature that a lot of people seem to be ignoring is Spotlights Smart Folders - I find this to be a really useful feature; allowing me to create folders that will contain all of the files related to one thing; also you can have the same file be in multiple places (it's actual location, and one or more smart folders).
The Dashboard is rather cool too, although a lot of the included widgets are not particularly useful - either because of being US only, or simply because they serve no real useful feature. One thing I would recommend to people with Tiger is to enable the Dashboard developers mode - this allows you to place Dashboard widgets both on the dashboard layer or on your regular desktop (always on top). To put dashboard in developers mode type the following at a console prompt
defaults write com.apple.Dashboard devmode YES
Then either log out and back in or restart the Dock with the following command
killall Dock
Then to move things back and forth between layers simply drag the widget and switch between the Dashboard layer and the regular desktop (F12 by default). This is one of my small complaints though - the choice of F12 for the default button to bring up the Dashboard is in my opinion a bad one, as this is used by Apple laptops for Ejecting a CD. While this can be re-mapped by the user they should have stuck with one of the keys that are not already used on all of their systems (F7 or F8); F1 through F6 and F12 are used for special functions by PowerBooks and iBooks, and F9 through F11 are used for Exposé.
While I have not run into any problems with outside software I wouldn't recommend using an of the lower level hacks (such as APE and it's modules) as it is likely to cause an unstable system.
