Let's Make Some Art, Dammit

January 31, 2024. Lunch time at the home office. These two know what that means: it's time for a tuna treat. That's Julia on the left, more reserved and skittish, and Emma on the right, eager, energetic, and ready to pounce. Most of my focus was on my newsletter and background reading on Javascript functions. In the evening I made progress on the Agora. I've started watching Succession, one episode each day. https://flic.kr/p/2pvLcve

January 30, 2024. This is a statue of Ganesh in my home office, a reminder of my visit to India in 2012 . The helmet is a souvenir from an Argos football game in 2014. Practising with my 50mm lens (the lens cap arrived today). Way too much iso but at least my f-stop is in the right place. I spent another day on character formats today; still not quite done but I'm getting there. https://flic.kr/p/2pvz9ho

January 29, 2024. This is the railway bridge through Casselman, as seen today on my daily walk ('daily', like 'AI', is more aspirational than real, but I persist in trying). This view is, of course, completely obscured in summer. Back with the 24-200 lens because the 50 needs a new lens cap. Sadly, I missed catching the train on the bridge by only a few seconds. I spent today working on my newsletter and improving my 'ghub' aggregation bookmarklet software (and in the process learned more about utf8 characters). https://flic.kr/p/2pvjKQX

January 27, 2024. These are vegetables that were delivered to my home today by a company called Odd Bunch. It's a subscription delivery service that finds vegetables that are either too odd or too old to be sold in grocery stores and sells them to customers. This was my first box and I'm delighted: I got lemons, oranges, apples and bananas, some blueberries, a bunch of potatoes, mushrooms (in the blue basket), broccoli, some beets, a pomegranate, Brussels sprouts (in the paper wrapping), yellow onions, green onions, celery, and several yams. The quality was just fine and I'll get another package like it - but with a different assortment of produce - next Saturday. https://flic.kr/p/2puVGjq

January 26, 2024. This is the hanging lamp in my office. It's the first photograph from my new 50mm Z-mount lens. Every photographer needs a 50, and with a new camera came the need for this new lens. It goes down to f1.8 which makes it really good for low-light shots (though not so good for this shot, but I did it anyway). Today I mostly puttered about playing with the chatGPT API. This morning I prepared and delivered a paper for Mackwacis Cultural College on connectivism. Giving me the talk made me think of various 'connectivist games', and I was thinking about using chatGPT as my game engine. https://flic.kr/p/2puFitG

January 25, 2024. These frozen cedars in my hedge are my first attempt at photo bracketing. To do this, you have your camera take multiple images, each focused slightly differently, then you combine them into a single image. In theory, photoshop does this, but it really didn't work very wekk for this particular image, so I used an app called Zerene Stacker. In my original image, the leaves in the background would have been out of ficus, but using this method I can keep both the background and foreground in focus. Interesting effect; I'm not sure how much I will use it in the future, but it was worth having learned. https://flic.kr/p/2puq9Xn

January 24, 2024. I pointed my camera outside the side window and captured this image of spruce trees between the houses. It was an indoor day today spent mostly puttering on the computer. I was pretty itchy all day; it reminded me of last summer but I think it was just because it was dry and I was traveling. https://flic.kr/p/2pufNew

January 23, 2024. The view looking north from the 21st floor of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel looking up College Avenue to McGill University and Mount Royal beyond. It's just before five and the dusk has fallen, but it's not yet night. I spent the day here at a workshop on Mongo database design. It was a great day, the event was a lot of fun, I learned a ton, and the venue was great. Took the train home the same night, driving home from Ottawa because it doesn't stop in Casselman in the evening. https://flic.kr/p/2pubqBH

January 22, 2024. Art in a gallery on St. Paul St. W. in Old Montreal. I took the train here today to attend a Mongo DB workshop starting first thing tomorrow. https://flic.kr/p/2ptXFyR

January 21, 2024. Snowshoeing in Larose forest. It was a chilly -10 but I'm figured out how to stay warm in this kind of weather and so we has a nice outing in the snow-filled woods on a brilliant clear Sunday afternoon. https://flic.kr/p/2ptKHQ1

January 20, 2024. Olives at a booth at the show. After a visit to Costco and the Shoppers for meds we went to the Home and Remodelling Show at the EY Centre. It was worth the time to find out what it would cost to fix the siding on the front of our house (tldr: a lot!). No we didn't buy the olives, but I did get a slab of prosciutto to make pasta dishes with. https://flic.kr/p/2ptsRch

January 19, 2024. This is our cat Charlemagne. He's a big softie. The lens I'm using isn't really suited to low light - I had to take dozens of shots before I got one that wasn't fuzzy (it doesn't help that the cat is fuzzy). Today I had one meeting and mostly worked on the topic of context. https://flic.kr/p/2ptnJhH

January 18, 2024. This is an array of solar panels as seen from behind. They're alongside the tracks a few blocks from home. I took this photograph on my daily walk at lunchtime. I liked the clean lines and almost monochromatic look of the scene. Up early today for another morning meeting, but nowhere nearly as early as previously. I'm always a bit pleased when I can have a successful meeting in French. Otherwise, worked on my newsletter and did more reading on the topic of context. https://flic.kr/p/2ptdLVw

January 17, 2024. The red from the rising sun was reflected in the snow coating the trees for only a few moments this morning before it climbed above the clouds. As a result I had that "Good morning starshine.." song in my head all day. Longish day working in the office; wrote an article about copyright and AI in the morning and attended a long research ethics board meeting (by videoconference - yes, I drive into the city to attend meetings by videoconference) in the afternoon. Also a Costco trip. https://flic.kr/p/2pt2CPv

January 16, 2024. I went to visit my mother and Bernie after work today; this is my car in the parking lot at the residence where she lives. It gives you a picture of the weather we're having - cold, icy, and on the way home, a lot of fog. Just an average day in the office, though I did get email from HR reminding me I'm turning 65 pretty soon. The car, by the way, is a 2023 Honda CRV hybrid - I wanted an electric vehicle, but last year they basically weren't available. https://flic.kr/p/2psMvpe

January 15, 2024. Frosty cold today but these Tesla charging stations are working fine. I was up at 3:00 a.m. for my meeting, got a bunch of work done in the early hours, and went to the local Metro, where these power stations are located, in order to get some milk. That's pretty much my day. https://flic.kr/p/2psFfFg

January 14, 2024. This was the back ward today - bare trees and plenty of snowfall. A pretty good storm is brewing. I stayed indoors all day and worked on my European project, making a ton of progress. I'm also waking up early because I have a 4:00 a.m. meeting tomorrow. That's the price of working with Europeans. https://flic.kr/p/2pstaYU

January 12, 2024. I photographed oak leaves from below against a fading blue sky that's beginning to haze over as a winter snowstorm approaches. Had a longish meeting this morning and spent most of the day reading for newsletter articles. No, I don't have to read so much or do so many posts, but I like to do it, and it feels relevant to me. https://flic.kr/p/2ps5bws

January 11, 2024. This is some artwork on a fence around a vacant lot at the corner of Bank and Lisgar in Ottawa's Centretown. It's the site of a future condo, supposedly, though the fence is old enough to be seen on Google Maps. I was in the area to pick up a new 'pro' flash memory card from Henry's (where I got my Z8). I took the LRT in from St. Laurant where I had my car checked for a brake issue. I was also working in the city in my office, mostly background reading, but also a Blockchain GTX meeting and ethics review. Rewatched the last episode of 'Band of Brothers' today. People should be required to watch the 'Why We Fight' episode is they want to see what happens if you let the fascists take control. Meanwhile, I'll take the diversity and life I find in Centretown any day. https://flic.kr/p/2prWpXM

January 10, 2024. I spotted these porch decorations on the second of my 'daily' walks this year (it has been tough to get motivated). I spoke a bit with the owner who said he bought the reindeer but that his wife made the snowmen after he cut the wood. One of my favourite things is to see people being creative like this. Today was spent reviewing a proposal, on my newsletter, and cleaning my my gRSShopper 'ghub' function. https://flic.kr/p/2prJuGF

January 9, 2024. Working from home today because of the impending weather. It arrived around lunch time in the form of a good old fashioned eastern Ontario snowfall. A couple of meetings, and reading for my newsletter. A bit melancholy today - could be the weather, could be the dark, could be too much time online reading the news. https://flic.kr/p/2prA49u

January 8, 2024. This is my office in the city. There used to be a lot more green but my plants all died during the pandemic and I never replaced them. These days I'm, in the office two out of five days, which makes it hard to find a routine. Not sure how long I''ll be working in this office, but it has served me well enough over the years. Today I worked on my newsletter and fixing a persistent character encoding problem I've been working on. https://flic.kr/p/2prptfk

January 6, 2024. This bobblehead is from 2016 when I was able to attend a Texas Rangers game in Arlington. The game was April 19, vs the Houston Astros. I was there fgor a conference and was treated to a rare Dallas snowstorm. Anyhow, today it's January. and it snowed outside here, so I stayed indoors and worked on my European project. https://flic.kr/p/2pr1nNg

January 5, 2024. Tomlinson is the name of the company that owns this equipment, of course. It's a Caterpillar 335 Excavator sitting on the lawn at NRC waiting to be used in some of the construction currently being undertaken. I don't actually know what they're building (they don't tell us things like that, only that half the parking lot is closed). Today I spent time researching the relation between context and frames, models and schemas. Wrote a short blog post on 'AI drift'. Drove home through the snow (which you can see in the picture if you look closely). https://flic.kr/p/2pqKMun

January 4, 2024. We had some blue sky and sun today, which I wanted to capture in a photo, but I was in the office until almost sunset, so the trees were all a red orange, as seen in the photo. Still learning the new camera; it's about as good as cameras get, but it will be some time before I can really get everything out of it that it has to offer. I do love how deep and rich the colours are though. Today I worked on cloud technology, and Clourdon in particular, and also a new (to me) notes application, Trilium. https://flic.kr/p/2pqve59

January 3, 2024. Testing how well my new camera (a Nikon Z8) works. It works like a dream. This is the cedar hedge beside the house. Today was a work-at-home day spent mostly working on my newsletter, registering for a Mongo DB conference, and setting up a proper Cloudron installation for myself. https://flic.kr/p/2pqpo85

January 2, 2024. While we were in Barrie over Christmas I bought this lamp from a shop featuring Turkish rugs, dishes and lamps. The sparkly shade appealed to me. Anyhow, it now sits here in my home office, adding to the general ambience. Today was a back to work day, which I spent writing a blog post on 'emergence leaders in the classroom'. https://flic.kr/p/2pqdCtX