Lilac Festival 2009

Lilac Festival is an annual street fair market on 4th Street. Lot's of vendors and all sorts of interesting people come out. For a photographer it's a target rich environment. Took over 600 pictures today, will be posting the better ones to flickr over the next few days.

- Peace

500 KM and a Plan

I figure if I can keep up a serious pace for June I have a shot of caching my 2008 pace sometime in early July, around the 1700 KM mark. Of course that means doing 100 KM this weekend, and a 1000 KM in June.

- Peace

400 KM - One Day and 300 KM behind 2008

Hit the the 400 KM mark. That puts me 300 KM and one day behind last year's pace.

- Peace

300 KM

Hit the 300 KM downtown last night.

Did some quick calculations yesterday. To hit 4500 KM by Nov 31st I need to average 25 KM a day. Will keep you posted if this number is going up or down.

- Peace

Happy Birthday My Love

Picture of Kim on Sunday. Sarah and I took her for picnic in Kananaskis to celebrate her Birthday.

- Peace

200 KM By the River

Hit the 200 KM mark on the way from work to downtown.

- Peace

Lone Science Officer

Caught the new Star Trek on Friday with friends. Not sure if the new Trek is bringing in a more main stream crowd or if all the hard core trekkers went to the first midnight show but there was only two people in costume. I was disappointed. I caught Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country on opening night with a ton of star fleet uniform wearing trekkers and the energy was great. The huge cheer when the bad guy ship was finally taken out was pure energy. I liked the new trek, but opening night with a crowd of true believers is something special.

- Peace

Wolverine, Canadian Hero

I Heart Wolverine: How a ridiculous Canadian mutant conquered the world. Is the back story on why the new Wolverine movie is a big deal. The Canadian bits:

like all wildly successful figures in American entertainment, Wolverine is a Canadian

In 1975, he began as a loner with a shadowy past, and whatever character he had was mostly Canadian caricature. He loved beer and fighting; he dropped his g's and called people "Bub."
...
What's most incredible about this is that two generations of young men have grown up with their notions of extreme machismo inextricably linked to our neighbor to the north. Wolverine performed many of his dark deeds in the service of Canadian Intelligence, and the Canadian wilderness was the crucible in which his hard shell of manhood was forged.
...
Standing 5 foot 3, weighing 300 pounds (thanks to that metal skeleton), he's a hairy-backed fashion victim from a country nobody takes seriously. But look around any high-school or college cafeteria during lunch hour at the armies of hairy-backed, height and weight disproportionate fashion victims and you'll quickly realize that these are his people. If you're a nerd, a loser, an outcast, or a misfit then there's only one all-purpose tough guy for you. Wolverine: He's just like us. Only Canadian

- Peace

First 100 KM for 2009

Almost a month behind my first 100 KM for 2008. Sigh. Still it's a start.

- Peace

Translation for Comments on Flickr

Auto translation is something that has seen a great deal of hype ever sinceBabel Fish came out in the mid 90s. It's not yet good enough to do large sections of text. Though it can give you the feel for what an article in another language is saying. I'm not sure how many people use Google's Chat translation. Google chat is mostly tied to gmail, how often do you email with people in different languages?

However flickr is unique in that it's a community based on images, you can appreciate images in any language, so that brings people together. We leave short comments for one another. Short enough that translation software would really help. If I'm commenting on someone's photo and their default language isn't that same as mine, it would be cool to have flickr offer to translate the comment. After all Yahoo owns both Flickr and Babel Fish.

- Peace