When I finally went to see it I found a movie that was a a faithfull adaptation of the original comic book. It was dark, gritty, the casting and acting were excellent and the special FX were stunning.

And yet I couldn’t wait for the long (162 minutes = almost three hours) movie to end. Maybe it was that I already knew the ending which is equally dark or maybe I’m just too used to the instant gratification of the recent spate of Hollywood movies whereas Watchmen stuck to the pace of the original story which slowly and inexorably led us to its inevitable conclusion.

Again, all the technical elements of a great movie were there but for some reason it just didn’t come together for me but nevertheless is certainly didn’t suck. A worthy adaptation of a comic book classic.

If you want to gain an insight into how to take better pictures I highly recommend Darwins seminars, check out his web site for seminar dates.

One of the things I learned about however was High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. In simple terms, have you ever tried taking a picture of a landscape or object and although your main subject was perfectly exposed either the sky or the background was too dark or too light (washed out)?

The primary reason is that the contrast between your main subject and the background or sky is too high and the camera or film simply cannot adjust both extremes to be properly exposed into your picture. There are a few solutions to resolve this problem; Darwin is a god of using filters to properly expose his pictures to create stunning images where all elements are properly exposed.

Myself not only do I not have the patience to dicker with filters but I also don’t have the skill or a camera that accepts filters easily.

The alternative is HDR photography where in essence one takes multiple pictures of a scene at various levels of exposure (usually one picture under exposed, one where the main subject is correctly exposed, and one over exposed) and then using software to combine these into one correctly exposed picture.

This technique requires a rock steady hand or tripod or monopod, a relatively quick shutter speed, and a slow moving or non moving subject.

Darwin had discussed Photomatics by HDRsoft and I thought I’d give it a try, the results are below.

I took a picture of a wharf in Horseshoe Bay Vancouver using a picnic table in lieu of a tripod and the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) feature on my Cannon G9:

Good exposure on main subject (wharf), sky washed out (over exposed)

Better sky, but wharf and grass too dark (under exposed)

Most of the picture over exposed except for the grass

I then dragged these pictures into Photomatix and clicked the process button to produce the picture below:

About five minutes of diddling with the settings, not bad (pretty darned good I’d say).

I believe there are also HDR features (or methods) in Photoshop CS2 and Photomatix also has a plugin for Photoshop, but using Photomatix was quick and painless. Sign me up!!!

The show took place in McEwan Hall at the University of Calgary. The place was hot and stick and my wife who is shorter couldn’t see the stage as a whole bunch of dillholes pushed their way in front of us.

Nevertheless the Dandies (that’s what those of us on the inside get to call them) put on a wicked show and we all managed to enjoy the tunes for a while.

It was a best of the Dandies session with lots of their best tunes making it to the front of the show. They opened with Be In which surprised me but in hindsight was a good choice.

Courtney was in fine form but seemed be on a short fuse as at one point he cut Zia short during a discourse with the crowd.

All in all a great show, hope they come back soon or I can make it to Portland (heard they had a club there where they jam) soon.

I asked my mommy and my auntie and they said they would like to see it; so back by popular demand here is the Zardecki wish list.

For Jeremy

Can never go wrong with Lego, Jeremy loves to build kits, he is currently into the Racers series.

Magnetx (available at Michaels)

Jeremy has expressed a desire to make movies with his lego men, anything that can help a budding movie producer (cheap movie camera, more legos to build sets with, a book on how to make movies with legos?…etc..?)

Jeremy could always use more pants, socks, and shirts for a growing 9 year old lad.

Jeremy loves to read cartoons like Garfield.

Any Nintendo DS game with Legos, jumping things, and puzzles are always good.

For Natalie

Anything to do with horses; horse blanket, horse pillow, a lucky horse shoe, horse riding supplies (Lamlees is a great place for inspiration or gift certificates).

Horse books, horse clock, horse poster, etc…

Make up, perfume, bath stuff.

Girlie stuff….ack…girlie cooties.

For Martin

Blade Runner (Five-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition) [Blu-ray] (2007).

New skiing gloves, mine are getting ratty.

Some kind of utility belt for hiking where I can put all my bits that don’t go into the backpack.

A Springfield Armory – M1A, you know to reach out and touch someone.

72″ black shoe laces to go into my hiking boots.

A nice bottle of Port (but don’t feel it has to be just one).

Hiking sticks/poles

Any book on birding (bird photography).

Any good classic Jazz (Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerals, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Paul Desmond, etc…).

Any INTERESTING biography (not Truedeau or Mulroney; Churchill, Sinatra, Grace Kelly or such would be good)

For Shareen

Anything that keeps her feet warm; boots, socks, foot warmers, or slippers (that don’t get stinky).

Shareen likes good Country music.

Greengate gift certificates.

Books on flowers (focus on roses), gardening (in Alberta).

Like Natalie, Shareen is into horses so once again Lamlees is a good source of inspiration or of gift certificates.

Makeup brushes.

For the Family

Ski tickets to Castle Mountain or Norquay.

Most of the Zardeckis could use new skates.

Movie passes are always good.

Any family games where we get to exercise our brains, Martin and Shareen are getting rusty.

To give it a try I decided to travel between Hawaii islands. I started my journey from Honolulu International airport at 6:00 in the morning (sunrise is breathtaking from the plane). To make things more interesting I chose to synchronize game weather with the real weather on Hawaii islands but the weather was quite nasty, low clouds, eddy wind and fog.

I flew Cessna C172SP Skyhawk G1000 (glass pane thingy) which is a small plane which is easy to handle. I loaded it with 80% of weight (4 passengers) and 50% of fuel and took off. Journey was a bit shaky I had to adjust course each couple of seconds (note that I don’t have Yokes or Joystick). First airport I attempted to land was Molokai Airport, but I managed to land only from the second attempt, first time I flew too fast and was way too high. I refueled my plane and started my journey to Kahului airport.

This is where all the fun began. I landed there and found out that I couldn’t refuel my plane. And I only had 25% of fuel left. So I had to make choice whether to return back to Molokai or to fly forward to Honolulu International. I chose to fly to Honolulu International. I successfully landed there from the first attempt with only 2% of fuel left. Whew. I knew I had only one attempt and this added some excitement to this journey. Next time I might attempt something more serious but I only have keyboard to control a plane so who knows.

I hope SP1 for this game will make it faster (they promised to add DX10 support). That’s it for now.

I was looking for a new workstation to help me out at work; I’m a software developer and the building and testing of code was taking way too long on my previous workstation; I was getting frustrated on how much time I was spending idling while my workstation was running a system test or a build job.

I went looking for a new system (it was about three years since my last upgrade and the fans on the old workstations were getting noisy…compared to the shuttle lifting off). I was ready to shell out some serious scratch as experience has shown that investing up front will make your system last longer; i.e. you will keep and be happy with your system longer than if you spend less for cheaper components (usually just before they become dated or obsolete anyways). Some may not agree but it’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. I stacked up a number of workstations from various vendors with more or less the same specs (as close as I could make them anyways) and you’d be surprised who actually came out less expensive than the competition.

Back in October of 2006 Apple had just released their line of Intel powered Macs and I thought I should give them a look on the grounds that I could always run Windows via Apples Bootcamp if I had to (for those who don’t know Apples computers run OS X which is quite a bit different from Windows). I had used Microsofts Windows since version 3.1 and wasn’t keen on learning a new operating system but with the potential to run Windows on the Mac Apple made the list.

Once I had my list and was comparing Apple to apples (pun intended) I was somewhat surprised that Apple not only provided great hardware it was actually less expensive than the competition. I wanted an outstanding machine for work but also a great unit for gaming (my weekend weakness). I ordered a Mac Pro with 2GB ram, a 250GB hard drive, an ATI X1900 XT video card (smokin’), and 2 Intel Xeon 2.66 GHZ dual-core CPUs.

The process of ordering online from Apple is relatively smooth but nowhere near as slick as say Dell; for one thing Apple does not offer a personal lease which in Canada at least makes it much easier to write off computer expenses for tax purposes. Nevertheless the process went smoothly and after 20 minutes on Apple’s web site my Mac Pro was on the way.

It took my machine just about two weeks to make it to my house and after some frantic unpacking I fired that bad boy up.

The first thing that’s different about a Mac over your usual PC is well pretty much everything, but more on that later.

For Martin:
Hiking sticks
Shirt/Sweater that breathes
Hiking pants
Day pack for hiking
Gift certificate to Campers Village to obtain the above
Pattons Autobiography by Stanley Hirshson

For Shareen:
Harry Potter books but not the first one
Movie tickets
Clothes or gift certificate to obtain such
Pretty shiny things

For Natalie:
Music; Evanescense, Pink, Gwen Stefani
Rug hooking
French books
Ski gloves

For Jeremy:
Brain Age for Nintendo DS
Any Lego kit
Floam – Available in Calgary at Michaels

For the family:
Ski tickets to COP

As far as I’m concerned it was 2 kilometers around Upper Kananaskis lake followed by 2.7 kilometers of a straight uphill climb. Mercifully the trail was through some dense forest which kept us cool and protected from the sun. Once we got to the top however it was definitely worth it.

Rawson Lake is a small glacier fed lake in the middle of a large cirque and is surrounded by wooded ridges (see pic below). I believe that the lake is stocked as we saw plenty of little trouts jumping up to catch the little flies that were fluttering around the lake.

We on the other hand had to satisfy oursleves with a lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, home made pate, smoked salmon, and various nuts and dried fruit (all that was missing was the Dom Perignon).

After lunch we hiked back down the mountain and I found it hard on my knees; if you decide to take this hike make sure to carry a light load as you may find the descent difficult.

Further pictures below:

 Sunday, August 19th, 2006, 1:30PM, it was a rough start; I had between 70 and 80lb on my back to carry while the lil’ woman pulled her weight with about 30-40lb on hers.

 It was between 23 and 27C and our hike took about 3 hours; same hike normally takes under two hours when we’re not loaded down to the gills.

 If you look at the map below we parked our car where indicated and followed the northwest edge of the lake (about 4km to the camp ground) over mostly flat terrain. There were a few gentle grades but with our packs if felt like we were climbimg Mount Everest.

Once we got to the campsite we quickly recovered and setup camp for the night. First item of business was the shelter which I took care of (we hot an Asolo Hawk 3 tent) while the lil’ woman went to the creek to get water. We purified our water using the Pristine ClO2 Water Treatment kits which involves mixing a solution into the water to sterilize it. Believe me after several hours of sloggin that water tasted good.

Note: that I’m not affiliated with any of the product mentioned here; no sir, no kickbacks or endorsements other than my own use of these products…pffft

Dinner consisted of camp fire weiners and beans and lots of fruit punch  We also did some smores and hit the hay early.

 Our son was suffering from some allergies and the Snoritator 2000 scared of any potential predators while preventing us from sleeping. I have to say that I kept the wildlife protection (pepper spray) nearby as I’d never heard quite so many wilderness sounds as I did that night.

Although the weather was hot during the day any parts of the body not inside a sleeping bag got chilled in the middle of the night (lesson learned…get a big enough sleeping bag).

 Natalie and the lil’ woman got up early while the Snorinator and I slept in until 8:00 the next day.

Check out the travel album below: