Cheers

April Fool – Chalk Circle. A song I heard on the radio today. Shazam on my iPhone couldn’t figure it out; but I managed to somehow pull it out of the archives.

Yesterday, trying to make a hung-over friend feel better, I mentioned how beer makes one smarter by killing off the weakest brain cells like killing off the weakest buffalo in a herd – à la Cliff Claven in Cheers…

“Well ya see, Norm, it’s like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”

Beers on the weekend. Click here for the slideshow or click on the image below to advance to the next image.

Pre

Palm (Pre) vs Palm (Treo)

Palm Inc, an off shoot of the 3 Com company, made the PDA a mainstream object – it was the Palm Pilot; a name synonymous with the PDA. I never owned a Palm Pilot until they merged that item with a phone. The Palm Phone was born and I was a fan.

I got my first Palm Phone, the Palm Treo 600 in 2004 and then the Palm Treo 650 in 2006. The Treo 650 works so well, that I still use it to this day. I think It still works better than the Apple iPhone.

Recently, the Palm Pre was released on the Sprint network in the US. I got to test drive it when I was in New York last month. It is a worthy successor, unfortunately, in North America, the new Palm Pre is only available in the US on the Sprint network – a non-GSM network. I refuse to get one because I wouldn’t be able to use it outside of North America and I’m on Rogers in Canada. It it were available on GSM, there would be a much larger market for this phone.

However, they did produce some good commercials as seen below…

iLike

The new Safari interface

The new Safari interface is friendly to look at and make it easy to access my frequently visited websites. I had been using Firefox more often before this because it worked with more websites. Hopefully Apple has made it more compatible and did not only put on a new face. I’ll keep using Safari for now.

I was starting to lose faith in some Apple products after my iPhone was underperforming. I realized that it was today after it shut down in the midst of a phone conversation. Some say I talk too much, but I noticed that this has been going on since October of last year according to my photo below. After an unusually quick call to Rogers, they offered to replace my dysfunctional iPhone with a new one – hopefully that makes it all right again.

Cupertino - we've got a problem

Internet!

Internet in Squamish!

The Internet isn’t new to many, I’ve had the Internet on my mobile phone for almost ten years (it sucked at the beginning). Many of us have access to the Internet via mobile phones. With the advent of smartphones such as the Palm, iPhone and similar devices, they brought mobile Internet to the average consumer. I’m not sure if this or Facebook caused our addictions.

I had some free time on the bus this morning so I though I would try to connect to the Internet from my computer via my iPhone. Without too much effort, and not very much technical knowledge, I got it to work – I just had to look for the information on the Internet!

Rogers sells a mobile internet plan for computers for about $25-$100 per month plus the fee for Mobile Internet Stick – this is mobile Internet without the hassle – for a fee. I wouldn’t be willing to pay more than I do for Internet service as I have Internet access already at home. I pay about $30 per month for 6GB of data on my mobile phone. When I had an ADSL connection, I wasn’t able to exceed even two gigabytes of data so I should be okay with this connection when I use it periodically. Now I can get Internet access where I couldn’t before!

Published from the bus while on the Sea to Sky Highway. Woot!

60

Day 51: the best day of the season so far was on February 25 (day 51)

I skied my 60th day of the season yesterday – more days than the last four seasons combined. Living in a ski town certainly helps. I’m well on my way to skiing 100 days this season. Even after taking a vacation from my vacation, and if the weather cooperates, I will reach my goal by the end of April – right around the Telus Ski and Snowboard Festival – more reasons to celebrate.

Fifty days slipped by rather easily as winter really began on February 22nd (day 48). It was a good month; however, the snowfall is much less than the last three seasons which would be considered epic seasons. The best day that I’ve had, probably over the last four seasons was on February 25 (day 51) where it snowed over 30 cm. This combined with my powder skis made for a very enjoyable day!

I also managed to somehow ski 28 days in February and 29 days in a row. The streak was broken when the bus from Vancouver was delayed. February was all about skiing, eating and sleeping – and not much else.

In the 60 days I also took five lessons which dramatically improved the way I ski. I took lessons before, but my days on the mountain were always limited to practise what I learned. I also think the quality of the instruction at Whistler Blackcomb made a difference. This was the first time I took lessons here and the style was much different than other resorts in North America. This combined with the positive attitude of the people that work here is probably why WB is consistently ranked as one of the best ski resort in the world.

Today, day 61, is also my birthday, I think I’ll celebrate by going skiing! :^)

My flickr set of my days on the mountain so far. Click on the larger image to advance to the next one.

Alone

On this day when the greeting card, florists and confectionery companies (and society in general) tell us we should be together and happy – many of us are probably alone. However, when my friends tell me they are lonely – I usually tell them to go outside – there are six billion people out there. However, the video (above) showed me that I’m wrong – we don’t need to go outside because we are never alone.

Even though I live more than 3000 km from where I did three months ago; I still phone, text, email, skype, facebook, blog, twitter, yelp, IM or [insert your technology of choice] with my friends from my former hometown more than daily. It’s like I never left.

When I’m skiing, (I do this almost daily) I meet and speak to someone new on an hourly basis. They are a captive audience for about 10 to 20 minutes when we ride the gondola, chairlift or t-bar. People in ski resorts are generally very happy and glad to be there (regardless of the weather) and most are glad to talk. Sometimes I’m their captive audience. Occasionally, we end up skiing a run or two and even end up at the pub for après.

Personal interaction is so much better than any technology could try to emulate. I’m not sure what these technologies are achieving; but it make me yearn to be alone.

Instead of going outside to avoid being loney – maybe we need to go outside to be together.

Religious

My first meal of 2009; a chocolate smoothie.

I’ve been eating food all of my life – and I’ve been eating a lot of it. Probably a combination of my high metabolism and the amount of physical activity that I do. When I was younger, I didn’t take any notice what kind of food I was eating – as long as it contained calories and was edible – sometimes these were not even factors. I often thought that eating this much and what I ate could not sustain me indefinitely.

When I was in university, I started paying more attention to my diet because of articles that I read and people that I spoke to. At this point, I drastically reduced and then stopped consuming refined sugar and caffeine. I even made an attempt at vegetarianism, but I think it lasted about a week because of the lack of information that I had.

Fast foward to the early part of the 21st century, I read the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Even before I completed the book, I stopped consuming meat because of what I read. I proceeded to read more books that collaborated with the findings in Schlosser’s book. I became vegetarian.

As time went on, I consumed (pun intended) as many books on the topic as I could get my hands on. I also attended a great deal of vegetarian events and potlucks. One of the potlucks provided me with the information to stop eating animal products altogether; this was early in 2005.

At some point in 2005, I met two people, Jeff Rogers and Brendan Brazier, that provided me with some interesting information about a raw food diet. When Jeff first told me about what he ate, I laughed. In the fall of 2005, I attend a raw food potluck. I had such a good experience at that potluck that I started the raw food diet as a test. A day turned into a weekend that turned into months that turned into years. It has been over three years and has worked out well for me. To date, I’ve eaten primarily raw food for over three years.

If I hadn’t tried these things, I wouldn’t probably have changed and my life would have continued down its narrow path. To many, it is not considered a diet, but a lifestyle where the diet is only a part of the whole package. Not only has my diet changed, my outlook on life has also changed in a positive way where I am living in a way that I think I should be living. A religious experience of sorts. Because of these positive changes, I’ve taken it upon myself to promote the diet and lifestyle. I’ve been doing this in Toronto since early 2006.

When I left Toronto in 2008, I wanted to continue the promotion of the lifestyle but wasn’t sure how. I didn’t have the time to do it the same way; nor did I want to do it all over again. That’s when I got the ideal to capture (in images) what I ate for a year (maybe longer) and blog about it. Doing it this way provides for easier access; reaches a greater audience and allows for feedback and interaction among viewers/readers.

With this, I present you with my new pages as listed above, What I Eat and the corresponding Recipes pages. The images are stored on my flickr photo page where you can see higher resolution images. The recipes pages will have links to blog posts where I will include the recipes.

It’s only been a week and a half and I haven’t eaten anything that has been too unhealthy – except for maybe some potato chips. I haven’t had any french fries yet, but that will come – wait for it!

Almost

It’s been four years in the transformation of the AGO from mild-mannered art gallery to a world class art gallery. This is Frank Gehry’s first major project in Canada. It doesn’t look like it will disappoint anyone. It even looked spectacular during construction. There was a reception tonight but it was a private one. It is scheduled to open to the general public in just over a week. We will see what the critics think then.

My images from the past year. Click on the larger 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!

New

I sold my D-SLR last week and then purchased a new D-SLR to replace it. However, the purchase that was most notable for me was the purchase of medium format camera at a camera show over the weekend.

Following up on my last post where I spoke about my affinity for square images; I purchased a vintage Yashica A. For the price of a moderately expensive meal, I got the Yashica, a vintage leather case and 10 rolls of film.

It will be interesting to see how the first images turn out. I’m excited about the possibilities!