Attack of the Canadian Geese!

Brought the family down to the banks of the Ottawa river today, where hundreds of geese shack up when it's not wintertime. I've done it a few times before with my kids but this time my wife came along and the geese were especially feisty. That is to say they kind of attacked us and tried to kill us for our food (not really). They were anxious to get some grub and I had brought some yucky flax bagels someone bought by mistake that weren't going to get eaten anytime soon.

After the first wave my family took refuge on top of some rocks while I snapped pictures, but things calmed down after that. You can't fight nature, you have to go with it (grin). The Geese put up a brave front and hiss and spit sometimes, but it's usually for the benefit of the other geese, or gulls, or ducks, or whatever comes over when there's free chow to be had. The best behaved birds of the bunch were the baby geese.

The location is just off the Ottawa river parkway west of Parkdale near Statcan were I work.

If you go, bring food!

Xbox 360 3 rings of death!

My X-box 360 showed the infamous 3 lights of death yesterday. Not good. The early 360's were plagued with some overheating problems which appear to warp the motherboard and make it so the pins of the CPU and GPU don't maintain a good connection, giving the 3 "General Hardware failure" lights. I was reading that Xbox 360's returned to the factory for repair are coming home with fancy new heatsinks so I guess that's Microsoft's way of admitting there is a problem. Mine's way-off warranty though. So what's a fella to do?

There's something called an X-clamp replacement that combats the MB warping I'm gonna try, thanks to the good folks at xbox-scene. I've got my fingers crossed!

Thanks for nothing Microsoft!

Spongebob ate my Ipod

Yesterday after I picked up my kids from daycare, I was getting out of the car as I do every weekday, one kid's backpack over one shoulder, my bag and the other kid's in one hand, groceries or something else in the other hand, Ipod in my teeth, etc. A typically normal day. Only this day I got creative.

My eldest's backpack is a sporty Spongebob number, with a handy see-through cargo netting pocket on the front. I swung it into place, unclenched my teeth and let my ipod in it's body glove sheath fall into the fresh-air cargo pocket to free up my teeth to hold my front house key (I have a system). This is the first time I've done it and I was thinking of adding it full-time into the rotation! It's handy! (un-handy actually, sorta.. teethy).

But today I understand what a BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD idea it actually was. You see, this morning I didn't need my Ipod. I had volunteered at my youngest's daycare to go visit a hobby farm on the Quebec side. So I wasn't grabbing Mr Ipod this morning to listen to some Yngwie. or that latest Lee Child audio book in the car, which was a good thing - 'cause Mr 30GB Ipod Photo went to grade 1 Glen Olglvie Public school in my kid's backpack in the cargo pocket!

About 15 minutes ago I went looking for it so I wouldn't be scrambling around in the morning and it wasn't where I ussually leave it. I took a seat in the memory cinema (now in IMAX!) and retraced my steps. "Hmm, when's the last time I saw it? Hmm, getting out of the car, dropping it in the front see-through mesh pouch of Jade's backpack...."..

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

But I went to look for it and it was still sitting there, perfectly visible from 20 feet away! Since today was an activity day for the youngest my wife picked up Jade right after school, limiting the backpack's travel a bit. I'm not sure it would have survied the after school program...


So I was Stooooopid and now I'm a bit smarter. Normally I'd look at the positive side of a missing Ipod and think "Upgrade!" but it hurts more when it's your own damned fault.

Thank you Spongebob, for watching over my Ipod!

Mr Lee's cat camera - see what cats do during the day

Courtesy of Mr Lifto. Man what a cool idea. This guy (in Germany I think) put a modified digital camera on his cat and it takes a picture every two and a half minutes. He lets the cat go outside with it and then he checks it out when he gets home and posts the best photos of the day on his website. I had no idea how often cats hook up with other cats. I'm not sure if it's for cat sex or just to hang around but man, very interesting. Mr Lee the cat met other cats everywhere, under cars, in the forest, in alleys, under porches.

Check his website out!

If he wasn't in Germany I'm sure there's be pictures of him crapping in my kid's sandbox.

That gives me an idea. I should tie a camera around MY neck and take a picture every 2.5 minutes (under cars, in sewers, in trees). Maybe my next geocaching night.

The Vampire security guard

One night at work many years ago, one of my servers blew a drive and I stayed late to replace it and redo the mirror. Since I was already there I started another preventative maintenance task of sorts to take advantage of the down time window and something screwed up and I ended up being there until 2 or 3 in the morning (unplanned maintenance = unplanned trouble). So when I had put everything back together again and was certain that everyone would be able to work when they came in the next day I called it a night and headed downstairs to the security guard post to sign out.

I didn't really even look at the security guard because at 2:00 am they are just sorta part of the government decor right? Plant, chair, desk, security guard... As I was digging out a pen I heard a funny sound coming from part of the decor. It was a "Kaaaazing..." and something shot over the desk and landed on the sign-out sheet. It was a little circlet of silver metal.

I picked it up to look at it. It wasn't quite round, it was sort of a spiral cut at both ends. It was a bit warm. I looked down at the security guard and did a double-take.. He was an odd looking fellow. He was young but looked old, if you can picture that and he was smiling sheepishly with very long incisors.

'Vampire guy' - I thought.. It looked like he had gone to the dentist and had them filed into points, or maybe they were just naturally that long. He had black fingernail polish on very long natural nails (I notice nails. I'm a fingerstyle guitar player with a set of long nails on the right hand and cut short on the right. Every now and then I get some gel fakes put on if I'm playing somewhere. Try it sometime, not many guys do, get made fun of in Vietnamese, it's great!).

He had some funky rings on too, like Yngwie Malmsteen, one on every finger. Some neat long dagger earring dangling from a chain that they'd probably make him take out of he were working the day shift and a strange white shirt under the blazer, kinda like the puffy pirate ones Jerry Seinfeld wore once on his show. His nametag said "Horrace".. The kicker was the Ann Rice novel on the desk next to a bunch of tools, a long thick rod and a spool of metal.

"What. ... are you making???" I was incredibly interested because I make all sorts of weird stuff myself. As soon as I said that it was like I was his second-best friend or something because he launched into a huge explanation.
"Chainmail" he responded gleefully. He pronounced the "mail" part differently like "Maille" or something.
"You take a metal rod and you coil this wire around it and then you cut the coils with tin snips and you knit it together. "I'm working on a coif!" From the looks of it a coif was some kinda chain-mail hat. "I just finished this cod piece!" That thing looked to be some sort of medieval jock in case you got hit in the schnutz by some Knight.

Veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery interesting! I really was truly interested. I started telling him about my bullwhips and the Australian plaiter's guild and HE was genuinely interested. I asked him what hell it was for and he explained that he was a medieval re-creationist and he got together with friends on the weekend and they wore the stuff and hit each other with these big rattan swords.

MAN! This gets better and better!
"I take Kendo at the Takehashi dojo in Chinatown, are those rattan swords kinds like bamboo Shinai's?"
" Not really." he goes. The swords they use don't give at all and you can get hurt if you don't pay attention. That sounded real interesting! I asked him how he learned to make chainmail and he said he had a booklet some local guy in the Ottawa Valley had made. He offered to make me a photocopy. I said that would be cool!!!!!!
I started to tell him my name and office number but he held his hand up and said "You're and you work on the 10 floor of the JT, Section C4 in Services Science & technology division..." (I hadn't signed the sign out sheet yet and I had been in my closed server room when the other security guard did the 10th floor floor patrol). ...

Scary...

The next day I had a photocopy of a booklet on how to make chain-mail on my chair. At break I told the guys the story and one of them said "Maybe he IS a vampire and he like, knows who you are because while you were working in your office he flew up 10 stories outside the building and hung there in mid-air keeping an eye on you!"

I didn't work any OT for awhile after that.

I saw the guy at work quite a few times afterwards, always on the night shift after the sun went down. He really didn't go out in the sun much.. About 3 years later I opened the newspaper around Halloween and he had been interviewed for some 'people who live and act like they're vampires' story. Interesting people in this city...So, sorry to the girl with the same last name as Horrace the vampire security guard on Kirok's facebook friend list. Didn't mean to freak anybody out with a stray email(of course, I'm a vampire sometimes too though...)

The sandbox - clarification

Yes, the sandbox... A clarification to my previous post entitled, "scaring the shit out of the neighbor's cat who likes to shit in my kid's sandbox". It's not really a sandbox, it's more like a small provincial park. Here's a picture of the dump truck load of sand I filled it with. It came from Petrie Island so it's pretty nice freakin sand!

It is dug to a depth of two feet all around, is surrounded by cedar posts and took me a LONG long time to excavate and get rid of the earth. I loaded 10 trailerfuls of earth and debris. My house is built over an ancient Indian airport because I found all kinds of chunks of asphalt and crap while I was doing it.

Each cedar post is 2 feet 4 inches long and has a piece of 2 foot rebar pounded into it at the bottom about 8 inches (drill hole, pound rebar, rinse and repeat ad nauseum). This is spiked into the ground with a sledge hammer then each post is nailed to it's neighbor with a 12 inch spike going sideways(it's very solid!).

Since I'm a geocacher I know lots of good places to get rid of stuff (old appliances, bodies, big piles of dirt) and I started dumping my fill at the closest Minto construction site where they were building some new houses.. That is, until a security guard pulled up after my 3rd load and told me to go away or he would call the police and charge me with illegal dumping. At the time I laughed at him because I couldn't picture the 911 operator taking his side. I kept going and told him with a straight face. "Buddy.. I own a Minto house. This is a Minto construction site. I'm basically giving them back their own FREAKING DIRT! Fuck off, call the national guard if you want, I'm gonna keep right on goin.. " And I did. He was a big fat guy crammed in the cab of this really small truck and he was eating something chocolate in bar form. He got on his radio.

When I went back again with load #4 I drove in the back way along the fence to see if he had actually called the police and sure enough, there was another security guard truck and they had parked in the entry way and were blocking my way in. I forgot about that place and went to spot #2 which was workable as long as you could empty the damned trailer out in about 10 minutes. Uggg. I did 7 loads like that...

SO that's the provincial park in our back yard. When the kids grow out of it we'll turn it into a small beach/volleyball court with a firepit!

So.. No,, I can't cover it with anything. It's very inviting. Now that you've all seen it I'm sure some of you must feel the need to come over and crap in it (maybe just Lifto!)

Scaring the shit out of the neighbor's cat...

This is my neighbor's cat. I don't know which neighbor exactly, but I'm sure it's somebody close. I took the photo from my kitchen window this morning. This cat likes to use my kid's sandbox as it's personal toilet and this makes me kinda mad.
I'm getting sick of raking the sand each day they go to play in it because they invariably find some brown squishy smelly stuff and hand it to me and ask "Oohhh, yucky, what is that Daddy?"
"Ohh, that's cat clay, give me that. Ok, go inside and wash your hands, daddy will get the rake..."

I guess the cat doesn't know any better, hey, If I was outside somewhere in the forest and came across a huge toilet in the middle of nowhere that dwarfed my own at home (or urinal.. yeah, let's make that a huge urinal, I don't have one of those at home. That's why they're so fun to use at work) you can bet I'd give it a go if nature called.
So it's not the stupid cat's fault. I'm not a cat person. I'm a dog person. Dogs actually like human beings whereas cats couldn't give a hoot about whether you lived or died. I guess this makes cats slightly psychopathic. I don't hate cats really, not since I saw this documentary on them and found out what killing machines they are. If you keep track of the small animals and birds a typical outdoor cat kills, they run up some huge numbers!
So back to the cat. It's not exactly the cat's fault it shits on my property, it's the owners that let it walk around outside and crap wherever it the hell it wants. I guess they like it that way, keeps the crap outta their yard and cuts down on the smell all cat owners contend with by keeping a box of poo inside their house.

But the owners weren't in my backyard this morning. The cat was.

I was in my bathrobe, eating my fruit loops when I saw the cat so I took a picture. Then I grabbed my bullwhip, quietly slid the door open, and snuck out. I closed the door, tip-toed a few feet to get a good running start and was on top of the cat before it really knew I was there(grin). The cat did a quick double-take with a very strange expression on his face, like a conceited "Oh, it's just a human. what the hell does he think he's doing? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!". It's eyes got HUGE!

I thundered down on it and it turned and leaped 5 feet vertically up in the air trying to jump over my fence as I let a nice big sonic boom go off under his butt(a bullwhip crack can break the sound barrier, 700 miles per hour). His huge jump didn't work because I have a six feet PVC fence(grin). It smacked the top of the plastic scrambling at it trying to hold on like a cartoon cat and slid down with me almost right on top of it. The cat jagged and got by me and sprinted 60 feet to the front gate in my fence where he probably squeezed under to gain entry, but it wasn't thinking straight. I got another crack off about 4 feet in back of him. I wasn't trying to hit him, I just wanted to give him something to remember (if I would have hit him I wouldn't have gotten the nice big loud bullwhip crack I was going for). Instead of going under it leaped vertical again (the gate is 6 feet as well) and did the cartoon shuffle and slid down and hit the grass. He jagged again (he was scared shitless at this point) and ran the 60 feet back where I had first cornered him and turned left down to the back of my garage. That was a really bad idea because that's a dead end. I turned the corner and..

It was gone.

Hehehehehe. I think it squeezed under my fence and got into the other neighbor's yard or it had gotten really smart and hid under my deck. In any event, mission accomplished(for now).

I wonder if he'll be back.

The damned ducks!

My god. Get the fork..... The NHL gives you a gift and relieves the Ducks of it's 2nd best defenseman and the SENS don't take advantage.

The Ducks are just one goal better than the Sens game in and game out. We're done. Not gonna win a game with 4 shots on goal in a period with 3 players in back of the damn net most of the time. No one seems to want the puck.

That's one thing I remember from some old Oilers documentary during their 3rd cup run. Messier and Gretzky and everyone are sitting around some poker table discussing how goals happen and what makes a good goal-scorer and Gretzky ends the discussion by saying something like:

"I don''t care what the other team is trying to do. I want that puck. That's MY puck."

That's how the Ducks are playing. Selanne, Getslaf.. they scare the crap outta me every time they hit the line. Any one of the Senators scare the heck outta me every time they hit the offensive line. Which one is gonna cough it up this time and cause a turn-over the other way!!!!!!

I guess we have to contend ourselves with knowing the Sens made it to the final. My other favorite team, the Habs didn't even make the playoffs! (wait till next year!)

Flamethrower test

Fire!!!!! Preproduction test for TPGMB2. Can't really burn down my whole backyard.. Particle Illusion is a really fun program!

Not again..... Sens down 2 games

WTF!
Two games down? That's the Ottawa I know!

I want them to win but &*%$#@*&^#%#$ that game reminded me of the 1992/93 season. I call it the SKATE!!!!! SHOOT!!!!!! SHIT!!!!!!! season because that's what the crowd used to yell in the first season and it's what I was yelling at the TV tonight. Not gonna win giving the puck to the Duck's defense on every (I'm not gonna say rush)
forward movement into the offensive zone. Can't carry it in, can't dump it, Oh well. 15 shots? Spectacular. It's gonna take 30 to get one, at least the ducks are shooting!!!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

NOT AGAIN!!!!!

Somebody better chew a piece outta someone's ass for that game!

Facebook

When Facebook opened up to the community at large in 2006 I remember hearing about it on some blog somewhere, checking it out and dismissing it as another myspace type thing. A poor man's auto blog chocked full-o ads. Well last month I got some invite through Facebook, I had some sorta pseudo account on there, not validated, half-set up and I finished it to reply to this concert invite I received. That was kinda cool. Facebook had added some smarts and it asked to go through my contacts list to see if any were on face book. "Sure!" I said (compromises my email password, why the HELL not!) and it found 25 people. I clicked on some names and next thing you know all these people are added to some list on the side and you can click on them and see what the heck they've been up to.

It was addictive. It was great to see what the hell people look like after all these years. Almost everyone's got kids, and they're all over the darned country! Most facebook profiles I looked at had funny sayings and stuff written by the people themselves. I thought to myself, "I have a blog, no way am I gonna write the same stuff in two places... No sense boring everyone twice(grin)". But hell, Facebook saw my blog and asked me if I wanted to set up an auto import. So it checks the blog every few hours and automatically imports the entries to facebook with a link back to the blog itself.

Not bad!

The weirdest thing is, once you get on there, and you add someone to your list of friends, their friends get a notification, and some of those people know you, so they add you and so on and so on, like some big friend virus, spun out of control.

Gotta go with market share with stuff like this. It's the biggest online social networking website, getting bigger every day,popular in Canada, (Toronto has the city record if you can believe it, 500,00 people registered)

Check it out if you haven't already. Not at work though, (poor slobs at Enviro canada have it blocked har har har!)

Emails from my cow freinds

Last week we went to 'Granny's' to swim in the pool that is much better than 'Winchester Joe's' and afterwards we went back to the farm and saw that some cows were there. Jade and I went to see the cows. They were new and skittish and didn't want anything to do with us so we went back inside.
Jade was talking to my brother Bruce about her new friends, 'the cows' and he went.

"What? they're your friends? Are they going to email you on facebook now?"

North Korea back-ass country Kim Jong Il rant

I went out and kissed the ground tonight(I think the neighbor saw me, but no worries, I think he's part of the witness protection program and has bigger problems to contend with)

Good old Canada. I'm so glad was born here. Thank you great, great, great granddad, for getting on that boat and coming on over from England, Scotland, wherever...

You see I watched a National Geographic special on North Korea and Kim Jong il, the 'dear leader'. Fuck that guy bugs me. He's running the most isolated country in the world where there is no internet and cell phones are illegal, with the world's 4th largest army (1 million) whose 238km border with South Korea is the most heavily guarded in the world.

WTF is over there? 23 million people, all controlled by one class A pudgy nearsighted dictator freak, with the cult of personality on the turntable 24/7. The people over there are trained from birth to love him. These same people still don't know that a guy walked on the moon way back in 1969!

So this TV crew followed around a Nepalese eye surgeon and the National Geographic lady(of Asian descent) was told that she was the only american in the country at that time (they seem to keep track of this). On the way to the hospital where the eye doctor was going to perform 1000 cataract ops in 2 days they zoomed in on a wonderful 12 lane highway in the main city that was empty(go figure. We have the queensway).

The doc and crew were accompanied at all times by North Korean government minders to make sure they didn't go blabbing about the moon landings or other imaginary things like the Internet or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They were only shown the clean "what we want you to see" stuff about North Korea. They included a clip of a Dutch documentary (zee dutch! isn't zat veird?) and in it a mother and young daughter were skipping to school singing a popular nursery rhyme that went something like
"'the pathetic amercans kneel on the ground, they beg for mercy..."

Gee.. Take that Barney the purple dinosaur.

Then they showed people going about their day, which was pretty wild. Hey, lets go to work and sing songs about our glorious leader! There's an empty town on the North side visible from the south where all the buildings are hollow but look good. It has the world's largest flagpole or something. Pretty much sums it up right there. It doesn't matter how it is, it matters how it looks.

Continuing with the tour, there was a park bench encased in glass. When the tv crew asked what was up, it appears that Kim's ass touched the bench 10 years ago and they honor it in this way, to preserve it for eternity. Like the zillion statues of the guy ain't enough. Christ, Wayne Gretzky scored 800 plus goals and there's only a couple of statues of him. What's this Kim guy done? Getting statues of yourself made up and sticking them all over your country is lame. See Saddam Hussain and Stalin on that one. Their camera guy took a pic of one such statue and lay on the ground to get the angle right and the North Korean babysitter freaked on him! Saying it was somehow disrespectful for a foriegner to do that, and said he was gonna get kicked out of the country for that (didn't happen)

I never knew this but when it comes to the 38 paralell, there's has never been a peace treaty, it's just a 50 some year 'cease fire'. Get that? a CEASE FIRE! There's this joint security area (follow the link, it's a hoot!)somewhere on the border North/South Korean border where a concrete line splits teh two countries. It's where the army guys from both countries they stand toe to toe with each other, well fed Northern officers staring down real tall Southies and US army guys on the other side(you have to be a certain height to work the south side, all real phsycological like). Actually that's not really true. They don't face each other, the brain-washed freaks on the North side stand in a triangle, two guys stand facing each other (so they don't defect) and their boss faces north with his back to them so no citizens defect. Kim must of come up with that one.

North and South are split by a dmz that's 4k wide along a 238k border, a million landmines, high votage wires, pointy things too probably. No way to get across that safely.

This part is real freaky. At the joint security area There is a room that spans the border where both sides have access, but the north never meets in there. When the southies open the door, they use two guys and they hold on to each other so they don't get pulled in the other side. Freaky eh? If they want to set up a meeting they call on some 1960 soviet crank phone but it's useless because the Northies never pick up the phone. Unless Kim says it's ok I guess, and he's probably really busy watching his collection of 20,000 movies and sipping cognac so there's not a lot of conversation. The documentary crew arrived on a good day because the US army guy had to get a message across to the Northies about a dead soldiers body that washed up on their side of the river and they wanted to give him back. So a drill sargent went out with a magaphone and yelled at them to pick up the phone (a translator repetaed the message in korean), then he just read the order out. As he started talking all the North ern soldeirs headed indoors lest the guy polute their minds with his talk.

"DID YOU ASSHOLES KNOW WE GOT A FELLA UP ON THE DAMN MOON! HE PLANTED A FLAG AND EVERYTHING! IT FELL OVER WHEN THE LEM TOOK OFF BUT HEY! IT'S STILL COOL!"

North korean kids are hungry. About 3 million people died i some bad famines in teh 1990's, about 10% of their population. Imagine that happening here in Canada.

A 7 year old North Korean kid is 20cm shorter and 10kilos lighter than a kid in south korea. They are basically the same in genetic makeup. They call it the stunted generation. It's due to malnutrition. They build beutiful 12 line highways and huge Kim Jong statues and maintain a 1 million string army but there's no food for the regular folks a lot of the time. And medical attention is almost non-exstanant. They interviewed a blind lady who wants to see again so she can see the great leader. Not her kids, or the sun, her own hand or birds or whatever, no. The pudgy nearsighted psuedo Don King haired Jong. Crazy!

Where do these poor brainwashed people get off on this us verses the world stuff? Apparently Kim's pop (kim el sung)came up with a philosophy, ju chea, which means "up yours" to the rest of the world. It supposedly says "We can do everything ourselves(despite the fact they have no economy, no trade, and short hugry little kids ). The philosophy opposes most all things foreign, (like help. The eye surgeon thing getting into the country was amazing in itself). The North Koreans have been abused by so many powers over the past hundreds years, this way of thinking must really do the trick.

Maybe it's the concentration camps like this one, camp #22 (thank you google earth) the size of a small city 50.000 people. The documentary intervewed a guard who said he was taught that the prisoners are not human. They are regularly beaten, and sometimes shot for something as simple as searching for mice to eat. He told a particularly gross story of seeing kids fighing over a undigested kernel of corn in some cow dung, the winner washed it and ate it. Camp 22 is supposedly a family camp. Get this, most of the people here didn't commit crimes, but had a family member who allegedly did (like maybe they successfully defected). If you complain about something to a buddy about the great leader, or the country in general, they rat you out and your famly, kids, and parents could end up going here. Nazi 101. Same if you defect. People don't know why they are there. Keeps people from leaving that's for sure.

And woohoo! If you manage to escape north, you land in China (also on my list of back-ass countries, great firewall of China anyone?)! where they can ship your ass back if you start looking for chinese mice to eat!

So back to the eye surgeon, he removes all the bandages, the government people put up a photo of kim jong so it's the first damned thing they see and who do you think the previously blind but now they can see people thank? Not the Nepalesan surgeon. They thank friggin Kim Jong. They sing the praise Jong song, the ' all becase of our great general' song. One lady told the picture that "I will work harder at the salt mines to make you happy!"

Ack... "For best lucky wash use Kim Jong detergeant!"

Time after time, they all said the same damned thing. Does anyone believe what they are saying or are they scared shitless? Or has it been so long it's just automatic to thank Kim for everything and anything.

And he has Nukes. Wonderful.

I'm going outside to kiss the ground again.

Gopher tunnel set

Since everyone (me included) loved the rodent that attacked GrizzlyG in the last trailerpark geocachers bigfoot film, I wrote in a rodent as a major character this time. A gopher! I picked up a puppet from somewhere in Vancouver and I'm constructing a set to film him on. Gophers dig tunnels here, there, and everywhere, so I can re-use the thing in a ton of scenes. He's gotta be able to run through his tunnel, pop his head out of a tunnel, look up at people walking on the ground above him, dive into his tunnel. Hide stuff he's stolen in his tunnel, etc. So this set is for all the subterranean shots.

I made a cardboard model then a tube outta chicken-wire. Then I covered it in newspaper and then filled the inside with Great Stuff expanding foam. I still have to color it, shave and shape it, then throw glue in there and chuck dirt around the insides.

It has cut out areas for the puppet hand track at the bottom , and a side viewing port to stuff the camera in. If I need to have him do something from another angle for which there is no view-port, I can just flip the film over backwards. I'm happy with the test shots so far. Once it's dressed it will look pretty cool! I took some test still shots of the gopher and the cured foam in it's natural color, like I said, I still have to paint it. The foam stuff lets light filter through it. Once a light dusting of paint goes on I hope it still has a little bit of that affect

Woohoo! My very own gopher tunnel!

Kingsmere

I recall reading somewhere that Mackenzie King was sorta loopy, but I'm in complete agreement with his sense of landscaping. If I could find a huge stone archway like the one on the left, buy it and transport it up to my summer cottage in Gatineau park, I'd do it in a second. Very cool! We went there on a rainy Sunday, paid $7 and change for parking and strolled around the grounds. I had heard there was a cave somewhere and we found it, but it's too small to be considered a cave in my opinion. If a small poodle can't fit inside it, then it's just some kinda hole, a nook, a cranny! Not a cave!

There's a pretty nice waterfall though.

Winchester Joe's swimmin pool part deux.

A few months back I went swimming at a pool near my grandmother's place in the country. It was at this guy's house. He has this frickin huge indoor swimming pool in his place.
At the time I was expecting something a little less extravagant, but that was before I found out that milking cows was so profittable! I took my camera this time around. Check this pool OUT! It's as warm as a bathtub!

Bazooka Test 1

Today I did a little pre-production testing for the next Bigfoot movie. I have a bazooka in the script and figured I'd be doing all the SPX in post. I used Particle Illusion 3 to make the explosion and smoke trail from the barrel. Next time I'll add a shell (not to mention a projectile prop).

Here's a test clip. I think it's gonna work fine! (hope I don't have to explain the bazooka out there in the woods on film days).

Squirrels!

My mom is still saving the squirrels. This one fell out of a tree somewhere as a baby and she nursed it back to health with some baby food formula in a syringe. In a few weeks when it eats solids you cease all human contact and it goes in the outside cage and a few weeks after that you leave the door open and it takes off into the wild never to be seen again.

John Mayer concert

We went to see John Mayer last month. It was a wicked concert. I wanted to practice my concert photography but they wouldn't let me take my Digi SLR into Scotiabank place(I had even taken off the big scary zoom lens in preparation). So after a short trip back to the truck we settled in to watch the show. Kathleen Edwards opened up and she was great BUT she kept bitching to the audience that they weren't lively enough. In my opinion, if an artist has to do that, maybe they should spend more time concentrating on being more exciting and less time berating the audience. John Mayer didn't have to say a thing and the place exploded when he came on (hehehehehe, ok, not the same market share, I know).
I first saw Mayer on the 2000 or 2001 Grammies when he played and won for his song "Your body is a wonderland". I was impressed with his funky acoustic chops and what he was able to do with his limited vocal range. Then I saw him on ACL and was surprised at his bluesiness! I was even more surprised when friggin Buddy Guy came on and Mayer played right up to his level! Buddy Guy!!!!! Mayer is a blues man at heart...
I love his stage presence and how he moves with his guitar. It's very natural and it's obvious he loves his job. He was even apologetic about the price of concert tix, etc. The only thing that bugs me about him is some of his perhaps pseudo-orgasmic guitar faces he sometimes pulls..

Great songwriter thought. I found out soon after the Grammies that he was going out with Jennifer Love Hewwitt. He's since broken up with her.. (check that! HE broke up with HER). The bastard!
And he has a fantastic collection of vintage strats. If you've never given him a listen, check his music out sometime. His John Mayer trio stuff is great too!

Tripper's 1000th cache

(Ok, actually that's Kenmore in the nightshot on the left). We all went out to see Tripper bag his 1000th geocache on BLAMMO! GrizzlyG's monsterous and hated creation for GAG10, the semi annual geo-fest that takes place in Ottawa. It was a hoot.
At some point in the evening when we were treeing a poor porcupine badly in need of dental hygiene for a Kodak moment (I respect wildlife as long as they cooperate for photos first) he took some massive branch in the face and started bleeding all over the place. Because we are all Canadian we thought that was cool!
Some of the guys were in a very good mood that night (a Molson mood or something) and for some reason we kept yelling out "BLAMMO" for no good reason which usually elicited gales of laughter.
I made a Blammo puppet out of some paper bag one of the guys seemed to have (there's some weird web address on it). I called him Blammo and he proceeded to insult everybody and deflect attention away from the puppeteer (why does that work exactly?)

It was a great geocache! A little bit of everything. And any geocache that features Yoda has got to be a good one. Kenmore and I being east-enders racked up some caches along the way that Tripper and GrizzlyG had already done. I also took the opportunity to do Tripper's Swamp Monster cache, which is in a few feet of water. Being dressed as Batman adds a whole other level of difficulty.

As we were messing around on that one, I caught a Canada Goose shacked up for the night on a big pile of dirt in the middle of the swamp. He just sat there. We didn't seem to be bugging him too much.

Congrats on 1000!

Near the end of the night I came across a huge turd pile, which reminded me of a funny geocaching story I heard that I'll have to blog in another post....