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Showing posts from February, 2019

Office Farming Update

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February 28, 2019. As you can see, I can now grow thumbnail-sized red peppers. The problem is that the header fan doesn't work, to the plants literally bake. So they dry right out. Anyhow, I did my presentation this morning; it went well, I thought, and got some administrative stuff done in the afternoon. https://flic.kr/p/SQvk7Q

String Time

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February 27, 2019. The joke is that it's *always* string time. Put the finishing touches on my presentation, built a blockchain wallet from source (someone else's code, not mine) and had a generally good day. https://flic.kr/p/SQvbkb

Alarm Bell

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February 26, 2019. No, we didn't have a fire drill. But when we do, this bell is very very loud. And I always look at it each day thinking 'maybe today is the day it will be photo of the day'. I did have a good day today, very productive, working on my presentation slides. https://flic.kr/p/2dzQxb8

RedBlacks

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February 25, 2019. This is our Ottawa Redblacks blanket, tossed over a chair and ready for use. Less productive today https://flic.kr/p/24mJJ6V

Dinner With Family

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February 24, 2019. I spent the day working on Electron applications, including my slide show, and then in the evening Andrea and I had dinner with my mother, Bernie, and my aunt Marilyn (all named clockwise). https://flic.kr/p/24mJrWF

Memorial

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February 23, 2019. We went into the city today and while Andrea was in the mall I took a few photos downtown, including this one from the Canadian War Memorial. https://flic.kr/p/2ePuS79

St. Andrews

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February 22, 2019. The trip home, again by train. This is St. Andrews on King Street, with Roy Thompson Hall in the background, seen as I made my way to Union Station. https://flic.kr/p/24hkH1D

Old City Hall

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February 21, 2019. I spent the day at the Big Data Challenge in Toronto, then walked back through the Lawrence Market and then along Queen Street, where I took this photo of Toronto's old City Hall. All photos on this trip were with my old beat-up Sony Car Zeiss (the best camera is the camera you have). https://flic.kr/p/R8pUsx

Tuba

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February 20, 2019. Arrived in Toronto and went for a walk along Queen Street. At one point I peered inside a window to watch this tuba band. It was a long day with a morning meeting and a 5-hour train ride. https://flic.kr/p/24hjEBT

Tracks

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February 19, 2019. The sun is setting later and later these days, allowing me to actually get daylight photos on the way home. These are the tracks just outside Casselman, a b-roll shot among a bunch of Super-Moon shots that didn't really work out (not enough zoom on the Sony). https://flic.kr/p/2dK51XQ

What is the Meaning of Life?

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February 18, 2019. Alex ponders the deep questions of life while pointedly not posing for a photograph. Less productive day punctuated with an all-staff meeting in the Research Centre. https://flic.kr/p/2dsdnQi

Mirror

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February 17, 2019. I spent yesterday and today working on a presentation about Electron (making a presentation is a great way to review what I know) save for a quick trip to the Metro where Andrea went in while I played with my trusty Sony compact cam. https://flic.kr/p/2dK4rR9

Twilights

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February 16, 2019. The Christmas lights are still up; it's been three years now. I really have to take them down because they don't work any more. Here they are seen against the yellow twilight. Spent the day working on Electron again; it's going pretty well. https://flic.kr/p/2dFFsHS

Chicken

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February 15, 2019. We got this chicken from the annual arts and crafts fair in Moncton right near our new house about a week after we bought it. That would be 16 years ago now. It hangs in our kitchen. Productive day with a longish meeting about open science near the end of the day. https://flic.kr/p/SDv3ku

Mountains Beyond Mountains

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February 14, 2019. I had a productive day today - got a bunch of entries judged for next week, and completed my WHMIS course. This is M55 behind the mountains of snow we got over the last couple of days. https://flic.kr/p/2eKSSPa

Shoveling is the Lonliest Task

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February 13, 2019. It was a work-at-home day today in the aftermath of the storm. The local snowplows did a pretty good job keeping the road clear. I got up to date on email and went back to refresh my Electron knowledge - found a much better tutorial. https://flic.kr/p/QYxh2V

Ice

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February 12, 2019. It was -15 or so when I took this photo so I didn't linger. This ice on top of the snow in front of the building where I work is a left-over from last week's freezing rain. Later today it will be covered with a foot of snow. That's why my work day was cut a bit short. https://flic.kr/p/2dC5Ehm

Sunrise

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February 11, 2019. The nice thing about seeing the sunrise when I get up in the morning is that it means the days are getting longer again and I'm not getting up in the complete darkness any more. Installed, fixed and ran Gephi today and created some graph visualizations from E-Learning 3.0 course data. https://flic.kr/p/247yi2k

Stars

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February 10, 2019. The afternoon light is shining through the living room window, turning everything a pale yellow. The stars came from Berlin a number of years ago. The moving box remains unopened from when we moved here in 2015. We are not very good at settling into a new place. Today I did some catching up on email and wrote a blog post. https://flic.kr/p/2eBuqHW

Sparty

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February 9, 2019. This is Sparty, Ottawa's mascot for the last 1000 games or so. I don't know where he got the name, unless someone confused Rome with Sparta some time 1000 games ago. Anyhow, it was a fun time at the game and we won 5-2! https://flic.kr/p/2dA7XUd

Namaste Frog

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February 8, 2019. While I'm sure there would be no objection today, the history of culturally-themed lawn decorations is not good. Did more with Docker today. You'd think I would know it inside and out by now, but this stuff isn't as obvious as you might think. Also, there's always other office-work types of tasks to do. https://flic.kr/p/SwQhcG

Office Farming

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February 7, 2019. The pepper crop is coming along. Pepper plants need a lot of water, and while they enjoy the radiator, they're suffering from being dried out by it. Worked more on Docker today. https://flic.kr/p/QUzYsK

Split Level

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February 6, 2019. This is the view from the Caisse Populaire parking lot. It's payday, and also, the provincial green vehicle cheque finally came in (it was owed since last July). https://flic.kr/p/2dhc2yD

Slippers

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February 5, 2019. A busy day today. These are my slippers. I bought them locally during the Christmas festival. https://flic.kr/p/QUhyNK

Garage

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February 4, 2019. I never had a proper garage before moving here to Ottawa, so even though it looks a bit messy, I'm actually quite happy with it. And it gives me another aspirational task to do: organizing the garage. https://flic.kr/p/2eA2C7C

Defiance

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February 3, 2018. This geranium in the kitchen stands out against the dreary winter backdrop. I spent the day relaxing, watching videos on YouTube, and playing No Man's Sky. https://flic.kr/p/2evA3pb

Fig

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February 2, 2019. This is the fig tree in my home office, with the blue frozen winter landscape out the window in the background. I spent the day in this office working away on node and Mongo and Heroku. https://flic.kr/p/23YHpYX

Red Polished Jug

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February 1, 2019. I was at the University of Ottawa today conducting interviews for the summer co-op position. On the same floor was a tiny classical antiquities museum. This jug with incised linear designs dates from 2100 to 1900 BCE. https://flic.kr/p/2dbm6Jk

Meeting Room

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January 31, 2019. This is where we have our team meetings - a few of us here, and by videoconference to people in three other cities. You can see my coffee cup, phone and computer on the table. After the meeting I did time sheets, I sat in on a Bryan Alexander webcast, and I prepared for tomorrow. https://flic.kr/p/2ez6eZt