This summer while I was waiting for a parade to start, so I started taking pictures of some of the other people waiting around me. I ended up with this neat picture of this boy. There’s just something about the look on his face… 0 comments more ...

I like how the background has faded away, and how the photo seems to make the ‘ordinary’ thermometer seem special. 0 comments more ...

I recently stumbled across this map of “Leading Ethnicity by Census Division,” based on the 2006 Canadian census (original on Wikipedia). Maps fascinate me and I thought this one was pretty cool. I thought I’d share a few thoughts, but first the map itself: 0 comments more ...

So I found this parking meter one day exploring in France. Having studied a little about parking I was fascinated. One of the goals of parking meters is to encourage turnover to allow lots of people to visit the area. In France, you sometimes run into timed parking (limited to 1 to 4 hours) with a similar goal. The “old-school” way of doing that was to have a little disk you would put on your dash, showing when you showed up (and by extension, when you could park there till). It took me a while to figure out the system (they paint the lines green for those spots) and then once I had it figured out, I never had a disk with me. So when I spotted these machines, I thought they were genius! They tell you right away how long you can park in the spot and how much time you have left. As a “bonus,” it makes if far easier for the Meter Maid to see in a hurry who has overstayed their welcome. 0 comments more ...

For Remembrance Day — Lest We Forget

They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
We will remember them.
We will remember them.

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While in France, the combination of being somewhere near ‘church mouse poor’ and living in a small (32 square metres / 350 sq ft) 1 bedroom apartment, I looked for hobbies that took up little space and so settled on photography (i.e. my Project 365 here) and dabbling in computer programming and to a lesser degree, artificial intelligence (my WmDOT for OpenTTD). It was quite enjoyable, but on my return to North America, I found myself with a lot more space and more geographically stable. I wanted to make things that were a little more physical and so with the encouragement of my Honey, I started into Model Railroading, a childhood dream. One of my shocks was the cost of models! A regular-ish building, measuring maybe 2x3x3 inches would cost $60! There had to be a better way… 2 comments more ...

My continuing adventures took me to London and to see the Queen! Actually, the Queen was nowhere to be seen, but I did see Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guards. On the square surrounding Buckingham Palace are gates recognizing the different British colonies and on the gates of the Palace itself sit the Arms of Britain itself. I thought the gold leaf was cool and it provided a nice contrast against the grey-green iron of the rest of the gate. 0 comments more ...

In France, many people (including me when I was there) live in low-rise apartment buildings. Typically, they are three to six stories tall with the bottom floor as retail (I lived above an insurance agent and a restaurant) and those above as residential. Many of the buildings are fairly old and so have narrow staircases and a small, if existent, elevator. Day-to-day, this isn’t too bad, but when you go to move in or out, the stairs turn into a nightmare. So the solution is to bring your own “moving elevator” on moving day! Such a moving elevator can be carried nicely on a trailer behind the moving truck and unfolds at your soon-to-be-former lodging. Point it at a window, which can be as large as your front door and is never screened, and the moving begins!

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The French love their comic books (TinTin, et al.), a tradition that may be ten centuries old! One of the oldest records in France is the Bayeux Tapestry (dating to the 11^th century), which records the conquest of England by William the Conqueror, in comic book form of course! The style is actually surprisingly similar to the newspaper comics, just without the bars between scenes and the punchlines. 0 comments more ...

A visit to the south coast of France would be incomplete without a visit to the Chateau d’If, the famed prison that gave birth to The Count of Monte Cristo. 0 comments more ...