Low Key Weekend
My Sweetie is out of town until Tuesday so I’m baching-it this weekend. My Bill-the-Cat Cold of 2008 is still running its course. I tried getting off of cold drugs but that wasn’t a good idea so I’m back on them. The term productive-cough is fine in the abstract, a little gross in practice.
I’ve got a pizza in the oven and a zombie movie from NetFlix. Excellent.
I’m taking a break from playing Fable II. I have to think how my generation is one of the first raised on video games, Pong onwards. I have to think of that first to justify a 40-something year old man playing a video game late into the night.
The Fable II visuals are outstanding and the play is pretty good. I only had to resort to online help once (I didn’t realize, when doing the first archeologist quest, that you actually need to leave Fairfax Gardens). Other than that I’ve been able to muddle through the ending (Theresa’s last word spoken to the game’s hero character changes everything) and then play on some of the additional quests.
I decided to be the most pure, good character possible. I’ve got a little halo floating over my hero character’s head to prove it! I don’t know what it says about me, but when I wander into town, I want to see all those little hearts floating above the villager’s heads and have them all gather around to admire me. Maybe one day I’ll fire it up again and play a bad dude. Or bad dudette.
But I’ve got to take a break. I’m up to 43 out of 50 gargoyles and wasted a lot of time getting those last few. I took a walk near the woods near The Tree House today and I kept thinking about bandits, balverines, and hobbes jumping out of the trees.
Time out. Eh, I’ve got a stack of business books to get around to reading. I’ll get there.
Right after the zombies.
Quick Trip to La Conner
We put faith in the weather report and headed out for a quick afternoon trip to La Conner, even though it was still gray and cloudy. It’s not a far drive and by the time we got there the blue skies were spreading far and wide.
We had lunch at Palmer’s, which was much nicer on the inside than I thought it would be. We sat in a spot by the window so that we could watch the various boats tooting along the channel.
Embarrassingly enough, this was the first time I’d really used my wide angle lens for much. It is way wider than anything else I have (10-22, though of course I have a 1.6 effect with my Canon 400D/XTi body).
Pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericri/tags/laconner/
We headed to the local La Conner Shirts store stock full of “Life is Good” ware (just about every design they make); they really need a “Life is Good” with Jake taking some photos. I then did a longingly slow walk through the nearby wood works store and then headed to A Class Act Gallery to enjoy Tim Wistrom‘s paintings, a lot of which show a post-human Seattle (like the ocean having risen to the brim of the Space Needle, with palm trees growing on the top and dolphins swimming around bottom).
On our way out of town, we stopped by the Snow Goose Produce market. I was just going to hang near the Subaru until I got a whiff of the waffle cones. An evil, seductive whiff. I plunked down $5.25 in no time for a Lopez Island Pecan and Pralines cone with one scoop. One, big huge scoop that seemed as big as a single Ben & Jerry’s container. I sat with my Sweetie and her Mum and watched Mt. Baker slowly emerge from the clouds.
A Visit to Butchart Gardens, and a Secret…
My Sweetie and I went to Butchart Gardens and what do you know, we both ended up taking a bunch of photos of flowers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericri/tags/butchartgardens/ – I really like my Sweetie’s close-ups that she was able to get with the Elph in macro mode.
For all the books and flyers you read as a tourist in Victoria, the one thing that I guess all the locals know and no one thinks of to share ad-hoc is that during the summer (at least this summer), Butchart puts on a large fireworks show at the end of day every Saturday.
We discovered this chatting with our charter bus driver after we already arrived, talking about taking a later bus back to Victoria. He went through the afternoon options, and then asked if we were staying really late, for the fireworks show. Fireworks? He said the show, according to some folks from the USA, is better than most 4th of July shows.
Unfortunately, we learned this at 2pm and the show didn’t start until 9pm. Butchart’s a great place to hang out, but not for eight hours during a quick holiday weekend. Anyway, something to remember for next time.
The Unexpected Alley Encounter
So my Sweetie and I enjoyed a two night stay in Victoria, B.C., this past weekend. It was a wonderful get-away. We roamed the streets quite a bit at night given that we walked and walked and walked everywhere as much as possible.
Since the drinking age is 19 and since there seems to be a lot of young folks working the tourist season in Victoria, the bars are crammed full of the young and beautiful at night, with lots of lines spilling onto the streets.
Ah, spilling onto the streets. Remember that.
So we’re walking along and come along Bastion Square and it seems like a pretty popular, well-lit alley and we walk along it, down towards the harbor. We pass a museum’s outside exhibit of a lighthouse bulb (big). Then we pass by another outside contraption that I could not quite figure out. Was it art? It was far taller than me, chained to a nearby post, and looked to have four outcropping – like receptacles – at various heights.
We talked momentarily, and my Sweetie said what it was.
“No!” That couldn’t be.
“Look at the ‘Men’ symbol on the side.”
“So you mean…” Yes. It was a stand-alone outside urinal in the free and open air. A classier name being: pissoire. See, that makes it seem elegant.
We walked back to our hotel and came across another one near the multi-bar complex The Sticky Wicket. Given the sound coming out of the dark alley nearby, it was not in a preferred location.
The next night we again found ourselves walking down Bastion Square. Armed with my camera, I was ready to take a dark, shaky late night picture. We walked pass the lighthouse bulb and I looked around and around.
No pissoire. Was it a dream? A really icky, awkward dream?
We stumbled across Camille’s at that point and walked in to check it out. Truly, you should ask to be seated in their second dining further back. Very romantic.
We walked back out and a government utility truck was making its way along the square. And what was tucked in the back but pissoire #3! I was going to get my picture!
The guys quickly had it out and chained up to the neighboring post and I walked around the corner to set up the shot and – what the heck! They hadn’t even left and it was already being put to use!
I waited. The truck left. During a spare, lonely moment for the pissore I snapped a shaky picture. I later learned that the bigger plan is to have under-ground pissoire’s that rise up at night. For now, they get trucked away during the day and then come back at night, as all the young party goers are spilling out onto the streets. Keeping the streets dry.
An older article: Victoria goes for pop-up urinals
A snapshot: 
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The Hot Air Balloons of Woodinville
I uploaded some of the pictures I’ve taken this year of the hot air balloons passing by. I’ll continue uploading them under this tag query on flickr as time goes by (though balloon season is just about over): http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericri/tags/balloons/ .
At the end of this post is a flickr slideshow. But first, my balloon story, because I’m not sure I’ve told it before.
We moved into our Tree House back on Halloween 2004. Late that next spring, I was outside getting ready to fire up the leaf blower and blow fir needles off of our driveway when a huge, furious sound erupted, seemingly from the open garage.
I stopped and stared intently at the garage. What in the world could have made such a loud, rushing, furious sound? I stared and decided that, ehm, nothing could have made that sound so, ergo, I didn’t hear anything. Back to laying out electrical cable for the leaf blower.
Of course, as soon as I convinced myself I didn’t hear anything, another loud rushing furious burst of sound ripped through the air. It’s times like those you wished you had a picture of your own face.
Then I heard voices.
Above my head.
Way above my head.
I took a peep upwards, and not too far above our tallest fir tree floated a eye-poppingly colorful hot air balloon, practically filling the sky. It was silent, except for the conversation of those in the basket and the occasional loud and furious burst of flame required to keep the hot part of the hot air balloon going.
Since then, not only have we enjoyed the balloons passing over many times, we’ve even taken a ride (unfortunately not passing over our own house). There’s one time I wish I had taken a photo when the balloon was traveling so low that I swore I was looking down on it from our deck halfway up the hill.
Flickr slideshow:
Quick Hike at Twin Falls State Park
We did a quick hike this past Saturday to Twin Falls State Park, right off exit #34 on I-90. We started at 10am and had did our there-and-back by 1pm. It’s a pretty busy hike – not too crowded, but by the time we got back to the Subaru, the cars that came after us stretched onwards for about three blocks.
This map track from my Garmin shows our hike (to the East) and then some: http://maps.live.com/?v=2&encType=1&cid=E02E2868380A574B!599.
The “then some” comes from me leaving the Garmin on and it picking up our misadventure after the hike to go to Gordy’s BBQ right south of exit #32 (no longer there), and then through downtown North Bend (no more Mar-T diner from Twin Peaks, but its replacement is there [with a mural of a slice of cherry pie and some damn fine coffee]) and then to the Safeway to regroup and determine a lunch spot.
I learned something about the Garmin Rhino: once it has a lock on the satellites, it does okay under the tree canopy, so get a lock while you’re in the parking lot before you head into the trees. We hiked for over 20 minutes before it got a satellite lock, so that part of the trip was lost.
Afterwards, I uploaded some pictures to flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericri). Before I did that, I did some tagging in Windows Live Photo Gallery (of course) and used the new Pro Photo Tools to load up the GPX track and geo-tag the photos. On flickr, you can go to the photos and see where it was taken, according to the matching GPS at the time. I’ve found that the street maps of the area are pretty off, but if you add the satellite / overhead picture, it looks right.
Go here to see photos I’ve tagged, location wise: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericri/map/ – iterate through them using the left / right arrows to load up new sets of photos.
I had my hiking monopod with me (well, maybe it’s a 2.5-pod – it has three little legs you can fold-out for some support). The lighting wasn’t great: probably a wonderful sunset spot for pictures. I ran into a photographer with the same sort of tripod gear I’m thinking about getting: Gitzo tripod with a Manfrotto ball-head. Anyway, a couple of snaps from flickr:
Yeah, waterfalls are great for that silky-flow result.
Owls Make a Daylight Visit to the Tree House
I was cooling it inside Saturday after our Twin Falls State Park hike when my Sweetie let me know that the owls were making a ruckus outside. It was going on 8pm (we have daylight until well after 9pm). Earth, Wind and Fire were playing at Chateau and filling the valley with bass and applause from the audience. We wandered outside, and heard birds making a ruckus.
Ends up that birds don’t like owls in the least. And they have good reason, having witnessed a out-of-the-nest chick get swooped up and carried away by an owl a weekend ago. So we walked along our road and above the stream we eventually saw the Barred Owl that the birds were going crazy over.
I took a few shots with the camera, but it was too dark and too far away. I decided I’d go grab my big zoom lens and was heading back to the house when that owl silently passed over my head to a large maple in our back yard. I walked over there and saw not just that owl, but also a smaller buddy:
Since we live on a hill with a decent angle, I was able to stand uphill and pretty much look at the two owls eye to eye. I took a load of pictures and uploaded them to my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericri/ .
I did get my zoom lens and thank goodness it has an image stabilizer. The light wasn’t great and it had to work overtime with my shaky hands and shaky body dealing with standing on a slopped hill (I should have grabbed my monopod, too). As a result, the pictures are not sharp, but they’re okay.
Eventually a third owl showed up in a nearby tree:
They all hung-out, waiting for dusk.
Now I’ve met some of the locals who hang out in our woods, letting loose with the occasional “Who cooks for you?” hoot.
Cougar Mountain Zoo and the ISO 1600 Goof
Back in March, I visited the Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah early in the morning. It was my first time there. I knew that they had cougars, but they also have two Bengal tigers, reindeer, and birds – lots of cranes and macaws.
Some photos are in my Puget Sound flickr feed: Around Puget Sound – a set on Flickr .
I was quite proud of how the day started, which meant I was destined to screw up. Ah, pride.
After the Woodland Park Zoo incident (not checking my white-balance before taking photos), I made a mental checklist to go over the camera settings before I started shooting. Auto-white balance? Check. Aperture? Looks good. ISO? 100. Alright, the basics are good, let’s go.
Some how, my magic fingers managed to change the ISO to 1600 shortly after I started taking some shots. Before I got to the crowned cranes I realized my goof with great horror and suppressed swearing. By then I had already taken shots of the tigers and cougars playing and it had warmed up enough that play time was over and the day-long naps had begun (get there at opening to see active felines).
So in what could have been some nice shots, I’ve got lots of noise. Like if you look into the mouth of one of the tigers, you see color dots all over the place. Bummer. You can fix white balance in a jiff with RAW, not so much an ISO screw-up.
Cougar Mountain is nice for being up close with the animals, but to do that they put some pretty heavy duty bars up between you and the predator, making getting good shots kind of arduous(shooting between the bars with a significant zoom). The staff is very friendly and ready to give you plenty of background on the animals.
Oh, and I discovered while the cougars and tigers would play all cool and disinterested with me while I was standing there taking photos, one screaming happy child running around would get their attention in a flash. Very handy.
Flying penguins found by BBC programme – Telegraph
First, read the story, second, you must watch the included video: Flying penguins found by BBC programme – Telegraph .
This is almost as good as the bumper Swiss spaghetti harvest. Kudos.
HD-DVD, Thanks to NetFlix, You're Dead to Me
Wow, this is too bad: Netflix, Citing a Clear Signal From the Industry, Will Carry High-Def DVDs Only in Blu-ray Format – Feb 11, 2008. While I own a few HD-DVDs, I mainly have been watching them via NetFlix.
(Another sick-day for me, so time to catch up on some mindless blogging; hopefully what comes out from my fingertips is reasonable English.)
I didn’t go feet first with HD-DVD: I just bought the HD-DVD extender for the Xbox 360. And I’ve watched more than a few movies on it, but I can tell you that I’ve had more problems playing back HD-DVDs than I’d like (most recently, the climax for The Bourne Ultimatum – I thought that if I wanted HD-DVD to fail, I’d certainly rent HD-DVD disks and corrupt the climax to a movie…).
So now… Blu-Ray? Maybe. I’d much rather just download the movies and burn them to a data disk or play them off the network. The nice thing about the HD-DVD plugged into the Xbox is that I didn’t have to go and find another way to wire HD video and surround sound into my stuffed system. Here’s hoping that one day I can download my NetFlix rentals directly onto my Xbox hard disk, maybe unlocking the next video in the queue after I delete what I just watched (and initiate the next download).