Sagarmatha

Sagarmatha, the Nepali name for Mount Everest, the ‘goddess of the sky’ has its peak at 8,848 metres (29,029 feet) – some airplanes normally fly at this altitude. If you stacked Blackcomb mountain (1609 m vertical) on top of Mont Blanc , you would get the approximate height of Everest.

I’ve always enjoyed the sight of and being on mountains, however, I’ve never really had a desire to climb them. I’m more apt to take gondolas to the top and ski down them. The first documented attempt to climb Everest was made in 1924 by British mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irving, however, they never returned. It was only recently in 1999 that Mallory’s body was discovered; however, they never found his camera and therefore no proof that they had made it to the peak. Irving’s body has yet to be found.

The two books pictured above are from two different angles. Touching My Father’s Soul by Jamling Tenzing Norgay (whose father Tenzing Norgay was one of the first to reach the peak with Sir Edmund Hillary on May 29, 1953), is a personal account of his lifelong desire to climb the mountain. Into Thin Air is the account by Jon Krakauer, a mountaineer and writer who was on assignment for Outside magazine. Both climbed Eveverst in 1996 and returned to write their books about it.

The events that unfolded on the mountain in 1996 were particularly notable because 12 people perished on the mountain – both inexperienced and seasoned climbers. Their deaths were likely the result of poor judgment or just plain bad luck. Both books tell the same story, but from different angles and both are enjoyable to read in their own way.

The only mountain that I’ve ever climbed is Mont Blanc in France in the fall of 2005 – and I only climbed to mid-station in summer attire. I took a gondola to the peak, the Aguille du Midi, which listed the altitude at 3842 m (12,602 ft). This is the highest elevation that I have been at while standing on land. Basecamp of Everest is listed at 5380 m – I’ve been considering trekking to here as some of my friends have done – they’ve all returned with amazing stories and beautiful images. A friend recently suggested that I put myself in more danger by skiing down mountains than by climbing up them. I’ll think about this further.

At mid station (approximate altitude: 2000 m) on Mont Blanc in 2005.

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.

Altered

Most of my photos are altered for colour, contrast and other similar lighting elements. I sometimes even retouch them to take out distracting elements such as lights and smoke as in the above example. I don’t do this often as it takes more time than it is worth. The retouching of the above photo took about 30 minutes before I published it. If I do retouch photos, it can’t require more than a few seconds worth of retouching, otherwise it is published as is or is discarded.

I am by no means a photojournalist where truthfully representing an image is of the utmost importance. One photographer set off a controversy in 2006 by submitting the following doctored photographs to Reuters.

The smoke on the buildings wasn’t that big of a deal, to me, as smoke can move and change rapidly with the wind. However, adding extra flares to the photo with the jet is not accurate or acceptable as it changes the reality significantly. I’m surprised that Reuters would publish the first photo as the photoshop work on the smoke was done very poorly. It should not have been accepted or published in the first place. It was and the accuracy of the photographer’s images were subsequently contested by a blogger, Charles Johnson, who coined the term fauxtography. Never underestimate the power of a blog.

Had the photographer added Godzilla, like Charles Johnson, he could have secured a job with a Japanese film studio.

Source: Wiki, Little Green Footballs

Footprint

The distance that these apple traveled to a local store for me to buy them was about 13882 km (8626 miles). I generally try to buy local produce, but it is not always possible because of the northern climate of Canada. Although there is no excuse for buying foreign apples because we have some of the best tasting varieties in Canada.

Thinking about this, I figured out my ecological footprint from myfootprint.org still exceeds the capacity of the planet by 1.65 earths; better than when I did this with a different calculator earlier this year; but still excessive. My biggest areas come from travel and consumption both of which I do more than I know I should.

Oh, the apples were not that good so I will only purchase local apples from now on.

Details of my ecological footprint.

Fireworks

I watched fireworks twice this week – once on Canada Day and the second time last night. I can’t remember what they were like on Canada Day, because it was quite crowded and I was more interested in talking with friends.

I got an invitation last night to watch them at the National Yacht Club and took up the offer. It was a nice place to watch because there were no crowds and it was nice and dark as well to watch and photograph.

The rest of the set from the evening. Click on the larger image to advance to the next one.

Oh

I almost forgot – today is July 1 and it is Canada Day. Happy 141st Birthday Canada!

The above image is from Whistler mountain in April 2008 where winter was still in full force.

Monopoly

Rogers seems to have gotten on the wrong side of many people by posting higher rates (than the rest of the world) for the soon to be released iPhone. On Macrumors.com, more than 96% have rated the news negatively. One person created a website to collect names for a petition about the rates – but it seems to be have taken down – probably after high traffic after making it onto major news sources, including CNN, CBC and the Globe and Mail. It did gather about 16,000 names before going down.

Nobody needs an iPhone, however, the Rogers rates and conditions are a bit oppressive. They include, monthly rates starting at $60 – which is really about $120 after overages, ancillary fees, taxes; a three year contact; and the kicker, an absurd $7700 cancellation fee. I really could not believe it myself. It’s confusing, but if one cancels one month after signing up for a plan, one would be charged, “the greater of $1100 or $200-$400 per month left in the contract. [Edit: the cancellation fee could be a typo - but humourous that they would allow it to be published.]

This is not surprising as they are a corporation and their main goal is to make money. It’s not totally their fault as the government is partly to blame as they allowed them to buy the only other GSM network in Canada, Fido thereby creating a monopoly in GSM cell phone service. There is already an oligopoly among cell phone service providers in Canada. Hopefully the recent wireless spectrum auction will yield some foreign competition into Canada and will kick Rogers’ ass.

I won’t buy the iPhone from them (unless the rates change and are reasonable); I’m even reconsidering my cell phone service – which I’ve had with them since 1992. One website that I found, ihaterogers.ca several years ago provided me with an alternative for home internet service that was much cheaper than Rogers and Bell. I pay less than $30 per month (including tax) for an equivalent service that would cost $50 at Rogers or Bell. There are cheaper and better alternatives, you just have to look and take action.

Regardless, one way to show Rogers that this is unfavourable is to talk with your wallet. It’s time for a change.

Edit: at some point in the evening of 7.1.08, it was changed and now reads,

“The ECF is the greater of (ii) $100 or (iii) $20 per month remaining in the service agreement, to a maximum of $400. “

302,952

I managed to get most of my data copied to my new hard drive in my computer after the hard drive upgrade last week. However, to my astonishment, in my pictures directory, I had over three hundred thousand files – more than 302,952 files. The counter kept going and I had enough time to take this picture before it actually started copying files over. The actual amount was just over this number. I’ll need to do some clean up.

I also learned how to use Final Cut Express today which was relatively simple despite having tons more functionality than iMovie and likely too much functionality for what I need. I wasn’t able to load any audio into FC, because I needed to extract audio through iTunes – which I haven’t restored yet, so I just reverted to using iMovie which is able to use MP3 files. The result is the same nonetheless.

Here is the time lapse video of my hard drive replacement; two hour compressed into 15 seconds – started with Final Cut and completed with iMovie.

View

I’m moving offices tomorrow; neither a good or a bad thing. I’m moving to a lower floor in another building. I’ll miss being on the top floor because of the view; however, it always is a long ride in the elevator. When I was cleaning out my desk today, the last thing that I pulled out of it was a fortune cookie. I broke it open and got a chuckle when I read the fortune.

Surgery

For the past year, I’ve been taking photos in raw image format with my camera. On one hand, raw format is great because images are a higher quality and one can manipulate the image more than a jpg image; however, on the other hand they are big – about 15mb an image from my camera! Lately, I seem to be taking more photos than normal and it is filling my hard drive rapidly. When the hard drive becomes more full, I find it slows the computer down significantly.

To combat this, I recently purchased a 320GB hard drive for my Mac. They’ve come down significantly in price to about $100 because a 500GB hard drive designed for portable computers was recently introduced. Last night I installed my new hard drive and everything worked out well! It took me less than an hour to replace the hard drive, but it took over an hour just to reload OS X and that is to the factory state. I still have yet to migrate my data or applications – I only have the browser working at the moment. Last time I did this, it took about six hours before I got all my data and applications loaded.

Here is the operation, images uploaded with the not so good Flickr uploader. I took enough photos to make a time-lapse video – but it will be a while before that is ready!

Update 6.22.08 – The time lapse video is available here.
Update 9.16.09 – I now have the 500GB hard drive installed!

Success!