100

A familiar pose. Riding the Revelstoke gondola. Photo by Jae from South Korea.

The number refers to how many days I want to spend on the mountain this season – on skis. I’d also like to take photos. Maybe self-portraits or maybe just of the scenery. I take photos everyday anyway so hopefully this won’t be a bother for me.

The season has gotten off to a slow start so far. The weather has been a bit unusual in the past month. First it was too warm and not enough snow. Then it became too cold when there was an arctic flow of cold air. This caused the temperature to dip to -25c at the peak of Whistler mountain on some days. It was also about -13c in the village on some days. The weather is starting to return to normal now. It’s snowing more frequently and the temperature is almost normal – which should be in the range of zero to -10c on the mountain.

My ski days for December will only be six – not much considering I’ve been in the mountains for the greater part of three weeks. The weather has been a factor – if it had not, my count would probably be 20 by now. I look forward to January and the rest of the season!

My daily photos from the album 100 days on flickr. Click the image to advance to the next image.

Clear

The first shot where I noticed the difference between my new camera (not the one in the previous post) and my old camera. The above image was captured at dusk, untouched – except for some minor cropping – and at ISO 1600. The higher ISO captures images better in low light conditions – but also produces lots of image noise because the sensor that captures the image is not sensitive enough and the software makes up for that deficiency.

I rarely took shots above ISO 800 on my previous camera because the noise made it look like a snowstorm. Bring on the night!

Dynasty

Ten years after I first visited Yankee stadium, I returned for a final visit in the last season of the current Yankee Stadium. They will be playing in a new stadium starting in 2009 – also called Yankee Stadiium and the old Yankee Stadium will be demolished.

Although there is a lot of history in the current stadium, it is an old style stadium. The seating is old, the walkways and washrooms are cramped and there are not many amenities. Skydome/Roger’s Centre in Toronto is quite spacious in comparison.What I find most interesting about Yankee Stadium are the fans that visit the games. They are the most lively, boisterous and out-spoken – true New Yorkers. The Yankee fans may taunt you because you’re a Jay fan, etc. but everyone can still be friends because we’re all baseball fans.

I’ll probably go back to visit the stadium before it is demolished but this will probably be my last Yankee game in the House That Ruth Built (or the Stadium, the Big Ballpark in the Bronx, the Cathedral of Baseball).

On a related note, while in NY, I met a guy from Toronto that has the goal of watching every Toronto Blue Jay game in 2008 – at home and on the road. He worked out a deal with his company to work part time – when he was in town. His enthusiasm seem to be waning when I talked to him – but that’s understandable because he has been watching baseball games daily on his own for five months and counting. As Homer Simpson knows, baseball isn’t that exciting most of the time (when sober). Ryan’s website, is Baseball Odyssey – he stopped blogging at the end of June – perhaps that’s when he contracted baseball fatigue.

Here is my Flickr baseball set. Click on the larger image to advance to the next image.

Numbers

It was actually the first thing that I purchased on eBay to give it a try. But I ended up with a paint by number set that I would not ever paint. I enjoyed them as a kid, but do not have the time nor patience to do one now. After several months with the paint by number set kicking around, I got the idea to enlarge it and hang it on my wall as art. I found that many people did not know what it was when they looked at it. Some thought it was a topographic map.

I made some others and matched some pencil crayons instead of paint so people that visit could fill in the spaces themselves. It has been by my door since 2001 and the result is interesting. Some did not know the meaning of the numbers – on the canvas or on the pencils and used any colour anywhere – hence the blue fur.

Some do not consider this art; but what is art really? According to the wiki page, Leonardo da Vinci might have invented paint by numbers but a fellow from a paint company commercialized it in the 1950s. It is probably considered pop or folk art; the Smithsonian had a PBN exhibit in 2001.

It had developed into quite a fad. Perhaps art wasn’t getting to the masses in that time. Older PBN sets feature works by famous artists whereas newer ones are generic paintings – animals, landscapes, clowns (eek!), etc. When I was bidding for my PBN set, I bid on some others, such as an unpainted da Vinci. In the end it went for over US$200 – which was a lot in 2001!

This PBN will be complete in a few weeks and be returned to its original place over my couch. I wonder what I will fill the space by the door with next.

My PBN set from Flickr. Click on the larger image to advance to the next one.

Ouch!

I’m up early this morning but not because I chose to do so – I needed to ice my sore wrist. My wrist has been sore for a few day due to a repetitive strain injury (I think) and I exacerbated it by playing volleyball on Friday. It hurts more now than before. Ouch!

Icing my wrist.

Boys

Everyone seems to be traveling or on the road these days – including me. I’ve traveled more in the last eight months than I did in all of 2006 when I went on about eight trips and took about ten weeks off work.

Here is one of my favorite images from India in 2006. When one leaves the cities, the country side is pristine and stunning.

Here’s one of my favorite images from the Dharavi slum in Mumbai.

Back

Baseball is back in town. Well, it’s actually been here for about a month, but it was the first game that I went to with Paul. He was at a basketball game during the home opener and I was at Whistler for our next game.

After the game, I took some photos of Paul in the Eaton Centre. I offered to do this because he wrote in his blog that he wanted to update his Facebook and blog with more mature photos. It was an interesting photo shoot. I’ll post the results on Flickr over the next few days.