Twas the night before christmas...

More Meh

Just thought I’d put this out there.

I feel really old sometimes and it feels like my life just isn’t turning out the way I thought it would, trying to figure out ways to change it seems more and more confounding as time goes on. Its like I’m stuck in this positive feedback loop of hesitation. Going back to school seems really daunting and all the programs I’ve looked at don’t seem very interesting. The idea of changing jobs scares the shit out of me. And winter! Man when the weather changes from summer to fall I get bummed out. Winter is coming and it sucks. 

I’d give up everything I own to go on some kind of adventure. 

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Meh.

Man, time really flies, I was thinking to my self this morning that its been a few weeks since I posted an actual blog but now I realized that the summer has evaporated before my eyes and I haven’t posted shit for months. Whats worse is that I don’t really have too much to say, still the same old job my life is the same old everything these days. 

As they say in Westeros, winter is coming, so maybe I’ll have more to write about then. I say that because winter bums me the eft out and I tend to write more when its shitty outside, as for now the blogging muse still evades me. 

Teppanyaki

Yesterday Charlie suggested we try going to a Teppanyaki restaurant and I was really impressed with the chef and is crazy egg juggling and food throwing, I wish the idea of taking a video occured to me before all the cool stuff had ended. If you've ever been curious about Teppanyaki I'd highly suggest it but be prepared to spend 12 bucks on a sapporo.

QR codes

Saw this on Reddit the other night, I love learning how stuff like this works.

Tony Anderson - Rise (Snowfall Remix)

Random unproofread thoughts for the night.

I’m feeling a bit bummed this week and I’m not sure why exactly. I think it could be the customers I have to deal with all the time at work, the stress of the customers is compounded by the fucking moronic third party agents that my company insists on using despite them being technologically inept. I think I’m struggling with the passing of my grandad more than I thought I would as well. 

After my dad’s bday I talked to my mom about missing him and how it wasn’t the same without him there, I was crying the entire drive home hoping no-one in the car would mention it. I’m really interested in cosmology and recently I feel like I’ve been able to get a better understanding of just how deep deep time is. People throw around words like million and billion all the time but when you think about everything in context, whats 85 years on the cosmic time scale? Its nothing. 

I was talking to charlie the other day about the afterlife, we disagree on what happens after death, she’s of the opinion that there’s some form of consciousness that remains after death and me, well, I don’t think anything really changes. There will come a point where my body will break down enough for me to loose consciousness permanently, but death is a process, not an event. I don’t think its like a light switch where one moment you’re here, the next your in the biblical equivalent of the cloud city in Bespin. 

What makes me me will always be here, just because my body breaks down doesn’t mean that the matter that makes me changes or goes anywhere. My body will break down and will just get absorbed by other organic material. 

Lots of people have religious experiences and feel like theres life after death, but that just seems so unreasonable to me. Why are all these experiences culturally contextual? If someone died in 1302 BCE, does their spirit live on in some way? Does someone from 800 BCE find themselves in hades or elysium? Does ever common ancestor that we share live for ever?

I’m not even going to proof read this, consider this post a shotgun blast of crap thats on my mind fired directly into my blog. 

Pictures from Dad's birthday.

wut?

lol what is this I don't even know lolwut

Scotch pop'in

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One Big Al

I don’t even know where to really start, but my granddad died last week.

I’m trying to think of something really introspective to say, something profound that would make me feel better, but I got nothing. Everyone knows that things get better with time, but that mentality doesn’t do much for someone who focuses more on the here and now rather than the future. I guess I expected to feel relatively fine considering all the close calls we had over the last three years but this whole experience was nothing like what I thought it was going to be… its been really difficult and fatiguing. 

The lowest point so far was the day after he passed while I was eating breakfast by the window and looking out over the city. I’m on the 32nd floor so even if it’s not a clear day the view I get in the morning is truly something to behold. I was thinking about showing off my new place and then without even realizing I thought about how much my granddad would really like the view from my balcony. It was just for a split second but I forgot that he was gone and that moment of recollection felt like someone had deflated my heart. I haven’t cried that much in a really long time. 

After my granddads first big stroke I was really worried that I might not be able to tell him how I felt about him, and that initial shock spurred me into action. I got to tell him while he was still alive that if I can get to his age and be as half as good as man that he is, then I’ll have know that I made all the right decisions in life. My granddad was the effing best and I think everyone I ever met knew it. I think one of the things I liked best was the look on his face when the gears were turning in his head, he was a man with a lot of big words in his vocabulary but when those gears stopped turning he always had a torpedo of a rebuttal for any point I might have made in one of our debates. 

Everything I’ve tried to write here has just been so forced I’m not even going to bother to proof read this, but I’d also like to note that not everything is doom and gloom in my life. I’ve moved in with charlie, my hours at work are slightly better and I feel like I’m getting a better at photography  too. I’m so happy that big al was my granddad, I’m going to miss him so much. 

I also wanted to take some shots of my grandads house, they might be kinda boring to most people but they all mean a lot to me.

Bored.

Not a whole not new with me these days, work still sucks and my back still hurts but my hours at work are changing soon so I’ll be able to have somewhat of a social life after work now, (woohoo!) 

One thing I’m kinda proud of is this picture a day blog that I’ve been running, ever since I started it I haven’t forgot or slipped up once! This is kind of a rare thing for me because I’m a really forgetful person, either way I’m proud of most of the results and having to look for something beautiful or interesting every day is a fulfilling experience. 

Thats about all for now I guess, I’m bored out of my mind today so I’m going to go try and find something interesting to do. 

Walk-about.

My days off for the past few months have been tuesday/wednesday, making today my saturday. Rather than sitting around and vegetating I decided to head over to High Park and then down to the lake to take some pictures. It was slippery and not as nice without the cherry blossoms, but it was nice to walk aimlessly around and catch up on podcasts. I also noticed that the squirrels in HP are really friendly, I think next time I go I'm going to bring some peanuts with me.

A video of things I would never do.

Watching this makes me feel better about my recent camera purchase.

Picture A Day, 2014

Yesterday while bored out of my mind at work I was thinking about my New Year’s resolutions and what I can do to keep up with them. For those of you that don’t know already, I’ve got two main goals/goal categories for this year:

-Keep going with the fitness and weight training/stop eating poorly.

-Practice/improve my photography skills, plan a few solo picture taking trips

I think the weight training and fitness goals will be easy now that the holidays are over – I pretty much stop going to the gym during the holidays because keeping a routine is far easier when you don’t have Christmas and New Year’s events coupled with irregular work schedules messing your fitness routine. My plan is to start going to the gym on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays (instead of two days a week,) and by the time spring is here I’ll be ready for swim suit season! Awwwww yisssss.

My plan for taking pictures is going to be a little more intensive. I HEREBY VOW THAT FOR EVERY DAY FOR THE RESOT OF THE YEAR I WILL TAKE AT LEAST ONE PICTURE A DAY. NO EXCUSES. To help with this I’ve started a new blog, Picture a day, 2014 

 

Now I’ve already missed a few days for this year and I’m pretty sure most of the pictures I take are going to be kinda boring but committing to taking a picture every day means I’m going to have to try and find new subjects and places to shoot. I’m also hoping that through this process I’ll learn some more about what works and what doesn’t, better framing, and just in general learning how to take better pictures. I don’t plan on really learning how to do post production on my shots, I understand that professional photographers need to do these kinds of things but for me the art in photography is getting the shot the way the way you want, the way it really is in the world, so as a rule none of the pictures I post on my picture a day blog will be shopped, (though they may be cropped. Maybe I should also take up rapping?) 

Another thing to note is that not every single picture is going to be taken with my dslr, some of them might be taken with my iPhone, or maybe different cameras down the line...

  

Black & Whites

7D Love'in

So, in my last post I talked a bit about my new camera but I want to talk more about it because I’m still riding that new gadget high like some kinda crazy meth-smoking norse god. This camera is just amazing, its fast, feels great in my hands and it will probably be the last camera I buy for the next 6-7 years, (they normally only go for a year or two before I upgrade.) While its not a full frame DSLR I still kinda view it as a scout merit badge for my graduation from beginner photography to enthusiast photography. I also updated my kit lens to a sigma 12-55mm f/2.8 so shooting in low light (what I prefer doing,) will be a lot easier going forward. I can’t wait to get up to the cottage so I can try and take some shots of the stars or for the weather to get a bit warmer so I can walk around at night without freezing my arse off. 

I think my only real new years resolution is to get better at photography, its something I enjoy a lot but 99% of my shots look like shitty amateur shlock. Maybe by this time next year I’ll try to submit something to a community art show? Maybe not, but at the end of the day its just about enjoying my hobby : )

My new baby.

The first pic I took with the new body and lens.