Random Photo: Summer Skies

It's hard to believe how quickly summer is passing this year; we had such a late start with feeble attempts at warm weather all through June.

Once July hit though, we've had such a string of absolutely gorgeous sunny days that cloudy weather is just a distant memory. This is down on the Fraser River along the Traboulay Trail.

Of course, hand in hand with beautiful sunny skies are the awesome sunsets in the evening. Of course, nothing as spectacular as beach sunsets, but nothing to scoff at either.

Blueberries: Summer's Best Fruit

Summer has got to be my favorite time of here in the Northwest as blueberries are in season and for the first time in my life, I've been able to enjoy, without restraint or looking at the price tag, eating blueberries with wild abandon. These are fresh from the Delta farms at an enormously cheap cost of C$18/10lbs. Sweet!

Ctrl-Alt-Delete: The Origin

Friend sent me a link for a funny movie clip on what is claimed to be the origin of the infamous ctrl-alt-delete key combination. The look on Billy's face is priceless after the man tries to dig his way out of a hole by claiming he's talking about having to log into an NT workstation with it...

Random Photo: Through A Paper Tube

A shot of my son through a paper towel tube one evening. The shots came out better than expected given the low light available. Of course, my son was having oodles of fun peering through the tube back at me...

Random Photo: Tulip In The Rain

This photo in limited resolution really doesn't do the lens justice, but the Canon 70-200 F4 USM is truly a spectacular piece of glass, especially at its price range. The tulip was shot hand-held (1/50@f4 at about 1.5 metres) just peeking out the dining room window. Color and sharpness was tweaked minimally to optimize for the scaled down image and in full-size, it would make an awesome print.

Suribachi This, You Dog!

Making dinner tonight and while grinding up some freshly toasted sesame seeds, I thought this was an interesting picture since it's likely that many of you have never seen one in action. "What's a suribachi?" you might ask; it's simply a Japanese mortar and pestle used to grind up just about anything used in cooking. You can read more here in case you are interested.

Blogshares: Fun Reads

I've been dabbling around a bit in Blogshares.com and through the process of looking for blogs to "buy" into, I ran across Sylvain Bouchard's blog which is recounting parts of his daily life in Sendai. Having spent 12 years there myself, it's always a fun read to see what other people have to say about life there.

If you have a blog, you might be surprised to find yourself already trading on Blogshareswithout even knowing it!

Caught Red-Handed

Sometimes you wonder what it takes to get your 15 minutes of fame; apparently, this guy has made his 15 minutes plus some by being caught on camera in this shot of people taking refuge from Hurricane Emily. Clearly, he's less concerned about the uncomfortable living conditions and happier with the fact that he's sandwiched between two soundly sleeping women...

My First Car: Honda Accord Hatchback 1978

While it's not my car specifically, I tracked down a photo on a website and wanted to post it for posteriety. It was a beaut of a car; I inherited it from my older brother who had purchased it second hand. It was cherry red, had most of the body decals stripped off the car, and lowered down so low that I would have to literally ease my way over a California speed bump otherwise I would have grounded out the center exhaust pipe. The interior was nothing special being a hand-me-down, and without power steering, the Momo steering wheel added inches to my bicep when parallel parking.

Despite all that, it was my first car and I loved it to death. I spent hours keeping the paint job shining, I learned how to change oil, clean the carburetor, and play with the timing to max out performance (what little there was). It was a great learner car and I was genuinely sad when I had to sell it off...

Squashed Like A Bug

It's a bit morbid to think about, but there is very little left to the imagination for what happened to the passengers in the car. Definitely not a pretty way to leave this earth...

Blast From The Past: Toys

Stumbled across some items on eBay which brought back a ton of great memories from my childhood.

Not sure how many of you remember the vintage Fisher Price Action Garage



and the Fisher Price House



but I remember spending many hours playing with these two sets; it's amazing what a child's imagination can do when provided with the right environment.

Random Photo: Turbined Toyota MR2

Toyota MR2 on eBay

The owner of the vehicle writes, "I have taken this car to the salt flats twice, the first time it wanted to fly @ 140 mph, but after adding the spoilers and air dam it stayed solid thru 187 mph".

Specs:
2 GE t-58 turbines
4 fuel tanks
power steering
power brakes
fire detection
fire suppression
roll over protection

Random Photo: Sunset in Vancouver

Summer is finally here in Vancouver and I can look forward to a few months of absolutely spectacular sunsets in English Bay. It's been long delayed and I've got my fingers crossed that we're finally going to see some long periods of nice warm and sunny weather.

Random Photo: APC

APC on Granville Island the past weekend.

In the Cat House

Cat lovers, beware! Seeing what these people have done to your house might fill you with too many crazy ideas! As I am currently going through the home reno phase right now, I can appreciate the amount of time and effort it must have taken to do what they have done.

Those Happy Meal Days

I was doing some surfing through Amazon and came across information on McDonald's Happy Meals and it made me think nostalgically about a job I used to have. I worked at a company called Simon Marketing which was the unsung hero in helping McDonald's get where they are today (well, at least up through 1999). Despite the numerous positions I held through my six years with the company, we were always focused on designing and producing those millions of McDonald's Happy Meal toys.

While it lasted, it was definitely one of the more fun jobs that I've had but that came to an end when Simon Marketing made the mistake of crossing McDonald's and they got dropped like an old hotcake. That story is for another day though...

Harry Potter - Half Blood Prince

A mistake by a local Canadian retailer allowed up to 14 copies of the new Harry Potter - Half Blood Princerelease get in the hands of eager consumers.

A court injunction was awarded to prevent any release of information surrounding Harry Potter - Half Blood Princeby the people who already had the book and they were ordered to return all copies.

Paul Stoddart - Extreme Wanker

Paul Stoddart shows his true colors as the total wank by pointing the
finger of blame entirely at Mosley and refusing to take any
responsibility.

How crappy of a sportsman can you be?

BBC reports:

Formula One teams could boycott future races if they get severe penalties for their role in the US Grand Prix fiasco, Minardi boss Paul Stoddart said.

Stoddart said it would be wrong for F1's governing body the FIA to hand out "draconian bans" to the seven teams at Wednesday's disciplinary hearing.

Stoddart, also speaking to Five Live, said: "That is positively frightening, because if it is anything more than a reprimand [it would be wrong] - the teams were totally innocent victims, as was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as were the American public.

He said Mosley should take "total responsibility" for the failure to reach a compromise at Indianapolis.

Formula 1: The Tragedy

Pictures are worth a thousand words, they say. Without doubt though, more than a thousand words (both good and bad) have been written about the debacle at Indianapolis a few weeks back when seven of the ten Formula 1 teams staged a drive-off just before the start of the race.

The repercussions are still being felt through the F1 world and all eyes are turned towards September when the final punishments are dealt out to the teams that chose to deliberately turn on their fans.

Zatoichi: The Blind Samurai

Finally got around to watching the movie release of "Zatoichi: The Blind Samurai" by Takeshi Kitano and must say that this is probably the most entertaining movie that I've seen in a long time.

With blood spattering effects reminiscent of the Tenchu console game series available on the Playstation, it's certainly an eye-opener in this day and age when Hollywood strives for achieving near-realistic visual effects.

If you haven't seen it yet, take the time out, turn on the English subtitles, and watch it in Japanese as how it should be watched!

Of course, you could check out the DVD releases of Zatoichi - The Blind Swordsman from the original series as well.