Click and Spin

Ride Report Apr 2nd

2011-04-02T18:45:00.000-04:00

I know I have not been updating as much as I would like to, but sometimes I don't have much to say, and just posting some dumb boring numbers isn't really useful for me, and probably bores the reader. So I am changing gears, and will be posting the occasional ride report and some photos once in a while, and numbers on a monthly basis, to keep things going for those who like numbers.

Today was the first official outdoor bike ride, and one of the nice things about our new digs, is that there is stuff to see everywhere you go, and even a short bike ride is no exception. Conditions were okay, the temperature +5℃ wind was out of the West, at 18km/h with gusting to 30km/h although sometimes it seemed to be 30 more then 18. I'll let the photos I took, or at least some of them tell the story. These photos are raw format, in that they are as taken, rather then being manipulated. Although they do not have the copyright mark on them, they are still copyright © 2011 Paul S Schmidt, all rights reserved.

The first photo is of a frozen waterfall, I included the bike so that folks would know that I biked there, rather then using the car. Not sure whether this is still Frank Street in Wiarton or Grey Road 1 in Georgian Bluffs.

This Next one is a creek that is along Zion Church Road, just after you turn onto it from Grey Road 1.

The next one is more of a river, it's on the gravel portion as you continue along.

There is still snow in the bush, I like the shadows of the trees here.

Some swimming geese made me wish I had brought the tele lens, next time.

A beaver took this one out, looks like it was quite a while ago, not sure if the beaver is still around or not,

I don't know why there are so many dead trees you can also see that there is still some ice around.

Another photo with the bike in it, to round out the series, there are more photos that can be found here

Enjoy.

As for the numbers, March had a goal of 84km, and again that was handily beaten with a total of 426 at month end.

We are a little late this week

2011-03-07T19:46:00.002-05:00

Okay, I am late this week, I think I will prep next week tomorrow or Wednesday.

Bicycle stuff

January Goal: 68, total 400
February Goal: 82, total 420
March Goal : 84, total 85

So far I am winning

Photo this week.

This is my side of the bay from the other side, somewhere in this photo is my house...

Toronto Bike Show.

2011-02-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

The Toronto Bicycle show is next weekend, I plan on going was hoping to get a group together for the Saturday, might need to rearrange that though. I like the bike show and I need to look for a few deals. If you have the opportunity to go, it can be a really cool show.

Bike Totals

February goal 83km
This weeks total 110km
So far in February 395km, one ride to go...

Picture of the Week,

This image proves that there really are no rules in photography, it was taken about 3 minutes after last weeks photo, converted to B&W and sepia toned, to make it look completely different.

February 19, 2011

2011-02-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

Just updating this week...

Bike distance numbers:

February Goal 82, this week 105, total so far 285...

Picture of the Week,,,

This was taken on a cold February Evening, up near Peninsula Shores District School.

Spring Bicycle Checkup

2011-02-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

It's the time of year to have a look at your bicycle for the coming season. Most people here in northern climates tend to park the bicycle(s) in the fall and they sit in the garage for the winter, then in May when the weather is nice, they get the bicycle out and find that somethings not working, so they take it to the shop and the shop takes the bicycle and gives them a slip of paper and tells them that they will get a call when it's ready. What they don't realise is that every one else had the same idea.

Now while the snow is covering the ground is the time to check things over and make sure that it all works. A lot of the checking can be done without actually riding the bicycle, and taking it to the shop now when the mechanics are not particularly busy, means they have the time to do a proper repair.

We start at ground level, the tires, pump up the tires, come back later, are the tires still full of air? Now carefully look at the tires and see if they still have lots of tread, your looking for thin spots, bulges and cuts. Next we move our way up, support the area where the cranks are, or flip the bike over, run through all the gears, are the shifts nice and quick, if it's slow it may need adjustment. Does the wheel wobble from side to side or up and down, if so, it needs truing. Look for broken or missing spokes, if there are they need to be replaced.

Grab the cranks and try to move them side to side, if they do move they may be loose or the bearings may need adjustment or service. Have a look at the brake pads, you may find it easiest to remove the wheel, is there lots of rubber left, if the grooves in the pad have disappeared they should be replaced. If they appear hard and glassy, you can rub them with sandpaper to get a fresh surface. When you apply and release the brake does it jump back out, or stay near the wheel or against the wheel on one side. If so it needs adjusting.

Look at any bare cables, is there rust on them, if there is they should be replaced. Turn the bars a few times, is it nice and smooth, or does it feel gritty or like there are notches or stops, in either case it needs servicing. Do the bars wobble back and forth if you try apply the front brake and try to move the bike. If so it needs adjustment.

Your local bicycle shop can do many of the adjustments, there are books that explain it so that many can be done by the bicycle owner as well, bicycles are quite simple, you can check books at the library or local book store to see if it's something your comfortable with.

Bike distance numbers:

February Goal 82, this week 105, total so far 179, goal exceeded.

Photo of the week:

This is one of the kittens, Tobias, if you follow me on Facebook you already have seen this photo, but I have done some editing on it here. He looks like he is smiling...

Just noticed, this is posting on Valentines day, so happy Valentines.

I knew I forgot something....

2011-02-07T21:11:00.002-05:00

... this weeks posting.

Willie Week is over, no shadow for the groundhog, so it will be an early spring, which probably means only six more weeks of winter. We shall see....

Bike distance final numbers:

January Goal 68, actual 400, so the goal was nicely toasted.
February Goal 82, February so far 74, so we are well on the way.

Photo of the week

Another photo from the backyard.

It's Willie Week!!!

2011-01-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

It the week that Wiarton Willie pops out of his hole and makes his grand prediction, will he see his shadow, or not, will there be six more weeks of winter or not. Around here, it's a big deal, with events all week, the prediction itself is Wednesday morning, at 8:07AM, it's actually a week long festival, that runs from February 1st to the 6th, for more information, you can visit the official festival site here

I am moving the weekly updates from Sunday morning to Monday morning, starting this week.

Bicycle distance this past week.,
January Months goal 68K, this week I added 80km for a total of 377km.

This weeks photo is from somewhere near Ferndale, ON you always think of Winter as being cold, and blustery, I kept this photo as a rare colour shot, because I liked the warm colours of the setting sun,

Snow, snow and more snow...

2011-01-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

Nothing special to write about this week.

Biking
Goal for January 68km,
Total this month 297km
Total this week 103km

Photo of the week

This is another one of the back yard photos.

The great outdoors

2011-01-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

This week, with a couple of borrowed snowshoes on my feet, I tried snowshoeing, a simple sport with a simple methodology, you can walk on top of snow, that can be quite deep, providing your feet are big enough. In this case feet that are 35½ x 76cm in size make it easy to walk on snow. Of course with the camera in tow, I was able to get some good images. There is a trick to snowshoes, you need to be careful that you don't put one shoe over the other, because that's a good way to end up doing a face plant in the snow. The nice thing about living in a more rural area, is that you don't need to go far to find nature, the photo of the week was taken in the back yard. Our back yard ends at the base of the Niagara Escarpment, and there is some forest above and below, this was in the forest.

Biking
Goal for January 68km,
Total this month 195km
Total this week 104km

Photo of the Week.
As I said earlier this was in the back yard, technically it was taken in the forest our yard backs onto. But still, I like the delicate structure of the snow here, on the branch, other then converting the digital image to black and white, it's natural light and as it was sitting on the branch.

2011 Week 2

2011-01-08T20:06:00.002-05:00

Last week, I spoke about what has happened, this week it will be what is going to happen.

I will return to the weekly photo posting, and will begin posting bike distances again, this year with a new goal, based on the month. I'll put in the occasional commentary, sometimes it will just be a photo and the bike tracking though.

Bike Goal
January: Goal 69km, Total distance so far: 106

Photo of the week, January 8, 2011

This photo is the shoreline under Spirit Rock, which is on the Bruce Trail, at the North end of Wiarton, ON. It was taken on January 1st after a 2 day thaw cleared out most of the snow, in the 7 days since, we have received more snow then we had before the 2 day thaw directly before photo was taken. The trail was wet, and is now inaccessible with out snow shoes.

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

Yes I promised an update for January 1st, more of a grab bag from the last few months.

It's a new year and the old year is almost history. We moved, from the insanity that is Toronto,
for the calm that is Wiarton, Ontario, out in the middle of the Bruce Peninsula. My wife has work out here, I don't so far, and figured that I could start updating here again. The job situation will be resolved some time in early 2011, I hope.

We just recently added 3 new kittens to the fold. So we went from Three cats,to 2 cats to 1 cat and now back to three. Kittens are fun as they explore and get into trouble. So far the decision is to let them keep their claws, even though they are intended to be indoor only cats, whether they get neutered or not, depends on how they act as they get older.

I am still riding the bike and taking photos, and expect to restart the photo of the week, and in the spring some ride reports, with a new place to explore there should be a lot of reports. I also plan on posting ride goals and how I do at them, so there should be lots happening in the next little while.

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas, and pray you have an excellent 2011.

Returning in January

2010-12-07T20:27:00.002-05:00

Okay, so the last post here was July, and I was only going to post ride reports, and there haven't been any, and I was unsure of what to do with this place. So I ended up going on a self imposted Hiatus that will end in January with a big update post that will try to catch followers up with what has happened in the mean time (lots).

Until then, I'm signing off again.

The Management.

July Ride Report

2010-07-31T19:47:00.002-04:00

No I have not forgotten this place, I just have not had anything to really say.

A couple of things happened this month, toward the beginning we lost Bartholomew our 16 year old cat, he joins the rest of the feline brigade that have called this place home, sometimes for a short while, sometimes a long while.... Blackberry, Creamsicle, Misty, Dusty, Theophilus and now Bartholomew. This leaves us without any furry people around, it's just a little bit empty.

There is a ride report for today - July 31st, we (my significant other and I) started at Union Station, headed South to Queens Quay (pronounced key) then East, I took the road bike, attached the mirror from the mountain bike, I never liked this mirror, but more about it later. After about a block there is a bike lane, condition on a scale of 1-10 about a 2, the road is in horrible condition potholed, cracked, broken and poorly patched in places, the brunt of this vehicular abuse is in the bike lane. One other thing I took was a backpack, in order to carry a few tools, left the rest at home as the bag was heavy enough with the camera gear in it. At one point there is an asphalt sidewalk, with clear stencils that it's for pedestrians only, this later morphs into part of the MG trail, there are no signs indicating this, or where another trail begins on the other side of the street, you have to just know they are there. We took a rather convoluted route to the Don River trail, and headed north to Queen Street. The trail is quite a bit below Queen, and at one point there is stairs, with a narrow trough for bicycle wheels to go up, the trough is about 8cm wide, and should be about 10cm wider so that pedals can clear the railing supports better. Now on Queen, we rode along a piece, I reached down and grabbed a water bottle, the cage came with it. I was not pleased about this, as I had left the screwdriver needed to reattach it at home.

We continued along Queen to the Sunset Grill in The Beach, had breakfast, then headed down to the lake and along the Martin-Goodman trail, heading West. We were debating about visiting Tommy Thompson or at least his park, but decided to skip it. We shifted to the Don River Trail on the North side of Lakeshore road, and rode to where we thought we could just hook back up to the MG trail, to get back to Queen's Quay, took the wrong road, but found the trail anyway. At some point the bike lane starts up again and the trail ends. There are NO signs indicating this, until you see the stencil that says no bikes. There should be a sign indicating where you need to go to the street bike lane. There probably should also be some kind of traffic signal there to allow cyclists to cross the street there, if there is heavy motor vehicle traffic.

This way the bike lane had several motor vehicles in it. I don't carry a cell phone, if I did I would have parking enforcement on speed dial. Parking in a bike lane, is blocking a live traffic lane, whether there are bicycles around at the moment or not. At one point the bike lane paint just stops, the road doesn't change, it's like they ran out of paint. Got cut off by one of those private hotel shuttle buses, and my knee hit the mirror and the mirror and frame came off the mounting, and went skittering across the road. I looked at the now broken mounting and left the mirror part to be pounded into the road by the heavy car traffic along that stretch. I always hated that thing, because it never seemed to stay adjusted right and fell off the mountain bike several times, it was all scratched up anyway. I'm replacing it with a helmet mirror, that I picked up at MEC this afternoon. I went with a helmet model because I always wear the same helmet, either bike and I can't forget to switch it from one bike to the other. I also picked up a handle bar bag, it's a small one, not sure about stuffing the digital camera into it, along tools and a spare tube. Thinking about the way we used to carry tools. You took a piece of cloth, placed the tools on it, folded the sides over the tools, rolled it up and tied it to the back of the saddle with toe straps, might do that again. You can always switch bikes by moving the tool roll to another bike. Thinking a square piece of faux leather would make a couple of excellent tool rolls, and probably considerably cheaper then a wedgie bag. I will experiment with making one this coming week. Needs a wrench, tire levers and maybe the Allen keys. Nice thing is you can carry a lot or a little. Put a piece of velcro around to hold it closed and just tie it to different bikes depending on who needs it. This would allow the bar bag to be used for holding the camera, although probably not the 70-300 zoom lens, would hold the spare battery though and be much easier to get at then panniers or a back pack. It's one of the problems I have, I don't take a lot of pictures because the camera is too hard to get at.

Total distance this trip, 23km.

Only got in 122km this month, after 214 in June, it was a hot July, August usually brings cool nights and that means early or late rides can be done with temperatures more moderate. Hoping August can be closer to plan.

Until next time....

Summer changes.

2010-06-23T00:01:00.002-04:00

I'm making a few changes around here, this is the last regular Weekly post, at least for the summer, I am going to evaluate whether to continue in this blog or not in the fall.

A lot of the recent posts, I have had difficulty finding topics, that means it's not fun anymore, about the only thing that I want to do here, is the ride reports, so I am taking a break from the regular writing, and will only post ride reports for the summer. In the fall I will decide whether I want to return to the regular column format or continue just posting ride reports, as that is still fun. I may also move the ride reports to another site or another format. This is why this year some of the topics have not been either photography or cycling related.

If you have a comment, please post it here, if your comment is to be private, then please put *private* as the first line of your comment.

Ride Report June 11th

2010-06-16T00:01:00.000-04:00

Friday last we decided to spend some time on the Toronto Islands, generally this means hauling the bikes along the subway, downtown and then riding from Union Station to the Ferry Docks. This was a little tricker then normal due to all the fencing being erected for the G20, not sure why they need to have all these leaders together and why they can't just group Skype for the meetings, it will cost a lot of money and inconvenience many folks. You can still access the ferry docks, but it's a very narrow access.

You want the ferry that is capable of taking cars, while a person can cross for $6.50 return, it costs $100 for a car to cross, and very few motor vehicles make the journey, some to deliver to the restaurants and businesses on the Island, but there isn't that many. It was unusual today in that we had a truck crossing over, and it was very large and heavy, considering how low the ferry was sitting in the water. You want this one for bicycles because it can accommodate about 50 bicycles.

Sometimes you get interesting things on the lake, like this thing, I have no idea what it's doing out there. We saw a tall ship as well, and I managed to get the new machinery on the barge along with the older tall ship, this is taken with a 300mm lens, and it's a little hazy, so it needs more manipulation then normal, to get the photo. With B&W you often use filters to cut glare, which is what I did in the conversion step here, there is some kind of reflection in the photo, that looks like a half circle, not sure what causes this, seems to happen more with smaller apertures though.

We rode all the way from Hanlan's Point to the far end of Wards Island, stopped at the Island Cafe for lunch, I wasn't impressed, neither was Pamela...... We went to the far end of Wards to where the old boat mooring point is, the concrete walkway here is in terrible shape, the top layer has spalled off in many places, usually we turn around from the walkway, today we went down to the end. You will notice a lot of graffiti in behind, which is in some ways ugly and beautiful at the same time.

There is a marsh at one end, the rocks are to keep the waves from boats from destroying the shoreline and the marsh. You often find marshes like this on the ocean, and there are literally hundreds of kilometres of marsh that are now in danger on the US gulf coast from the oil disaster going on down there.

We then returned, roughly the way we had come, total distance 22km..... I notice one thing with such rides, you often go fast and furious from one end to the other, and then meander taking breaks on the way back.

Grab Bag for June

2010-06-09T00:01:00.000-04:00

One of the difficulties with having surgery is that you have time that you need to recover, this of often determined by people who have lots of letters after their names indicating various extensive medical training. You don't always recover in one shot, and some things your capable of, before others. Currently I can't lift more then about 20lbs, at work we need to be able to lift 70lbs, according to the surgeon, that will take another month. So while it seems that I can do most things, lifting is not one of them, so I continue to be off work. Unfortunately when your off work, you tend to eat more then you should and you put on a few pounds. I am starting back on bike riding, and starting to build up distance.

Many times in the news media when we hear of things like Tornadoes we think it happens in places like Oklahoma and Texas, while they do happen there, a good section of Western Quebec, pretty much all of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are prone to the kinds of severe thunderstorms that can spawn Tornadoes, downbursts, microbursts, direchos and other interesting and damaging weather. The media often do not know that there is actually a warning system in place that covers much of the prone areas. It's one of the best kept secrets in the country, it's called weather radio. If you want to be safe in such storms, you should purchase a weather radio monitoring receiver. Canada and the US use similar systems. They are available from radio speciality shops, and can be placed in alarm mode so that you can be notified of such weather.

The new bike seems to be working well, it does not have bottle cage mounts, so I am working on coming up with something. I have two methods of going about this, plan A didn't work so well, neither did plan B, so I have plan C and will try implementing it, later on. Thinking about plan D at the moment, but it requires some materials, such as some metal strapping and the proper bolts.

I see these guys out again in our neighbourhood, although this photo is from last year, but I have seen them out, it's amazing how quickly they go from a tiny ball of fur to a nearly full size in a few short weeks.

Bicycle rebuilding project part 4 - finale

2010-06-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

I know I keep saying I am taking a break from it, and I don't.... The photo however is the completed bicycle with everything reassembled. There are a couple of changes to still be made and a couple of things to do on it, but bicycles are never really completed. The outstanding bits are rather simple, I need to replace the rims, brake levers and seatpost, these will be done over the winter as phase 2. There may be a posting or two here then.

The rims are rusty chromed steel, there is a busted spoke on the back which is gone completely now, the wheel needs better truing, chromed steel rims are lousy in the rain, so for this year it's a fair weather only bike, aluminum alloy rims (used ones) will be procured and installed over the winter. I may take the wheel to a shop I know and see about pulling off the freewheel and replacing the missing spoke.

The brake levers have extra levers on them called turkey wings, safety levers, suicide levers, they make for a bar that is not comfortable because there are no hoods. So a set of regular hooded levers will be put on there. If I can get them for a reasonable price I may put on Aero style levers, where the brake cables go inside the lever and along under the bar tape, which along with the stem shifters give the bars a very clean look.

The seat post is actually too short and the wrong size, some genius put in too small a post and then over tightened the seat post binder to bend the binder to fit the post. I will look for a longer post the same diameter and change this out. If I can't find one, I need a frame shop to bend the binder back into place.

One of the issues, modern bikes have threaded holes for bicycle water bottles, old bikes like the Raleigh do not. I never throw out brackets that come with various stuff, in this case I was able to use a couple of old brackets that I had sitting around to make something that works, temporarily. I figure out something more permanent later on.

The bicycle rebuilding project part 3

2010-05-26T00:01:00.001-04:00

I was going to take a break from the bike building story, as I thought it might be a while, until the next stage was complete. It's ahead of schedule, so those of you who are getting sick of the story, will need to wait another week before the break.

Disassembly is now complete, the frame has been touched up with some Tremclad rust paint, this should stop any further rusting for now, if it starts to really rust then it will need a strip and repaint. I have found the serial number, which indicates it was built in Waterloo, Quebec in September of 1975. Once everything was removed, the frame is really quite light, I don't think the frame, fork, bottom bracket and headset combined are even 3kg, which is about right for a Cromoly frame. Cromoly is where Chromium and Molybdenum are alloyed to the steel to give it extra strength so that the tubing can be thinner, reducing the weight. The next stage is to start putting things back together, which I was going to start today, Tuesday, but they are re-shingling the house roof, and I prefer to stay out of the way, so it looks like it will be tomorrow. The plan is to put all the pieces back on that I can, except the pieces I need, which are as follows:

Dérailleur Cable with housing 1
Dérailleur Cable without housing 1
Brake Cables with housing 2
Brake Pads (pair) 2
Tubes 2
Handlebar Tape 1
Chain 1

I've priced these items out to about $50 which isn't bad, my thinking was that it would be a good deal for under $75. It needs some bottle cages and a bag of some kind, thinking a handlebar bag, as the rack is staying on the Norco for now.

The photo is the unbuilt frame, about three quarters of the way through the painting process, today I start putting stuff back on, although there is a chance I might head downtown for some of the supplies I need.

The bicycle rebuilding project part 2

2010-05-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

The
next thing I did was a basic cleaning, then removed each component, it is cleaned, polished up, checked for function and then lubricated and added to the complete parts pile. Things like cables and brake pads will be replaced no matter the condition, because they are safety related parts. Cable housings are checked, they seem pretty beat up, and cleaning them up is not easy, so they will be replaced. The same type are hard to find these days, so I will use a more modern type of housing in black so that the cables do not detract from the bike. The dérailleurs look to be in excellent working condition, the brakes as well. I don't like the brake levers, so if I can find another set, I will put the other set on. The chain as you can see from last weeks photos is pretty much ready for the recycling bin. Everything seems to have cleaned up nicely except the wheels..

The wheels, well I don't like the straight sided steel rims, they limit tire pressures and are lousy in the rain, they are also quite crusty, the rear wheel is missing a spoke in the drive side, which means the freewheel needs to come off. The hub doesn't turn freely, so the bearings are probably shot. This creates a rather nasty problem. Usually the problem is that the lubricating grease has dried up and the bearings are glued in place, so they don't turn freely. The hub therefore needs to be rebuilt, this involves cleaning out the old grease, taking out the bearings, possibly putting in new bearings and putting it all back together. The risk in this is that if water got into the hub, it could have rusted the bearings, cones and races, meaning a new hub is needed. I don't have the freewheel removal tools, so I need to get the freewheel removed at a shop or use a co-op where I can rent the proper tool. The other option is to look for another used wheel that doesn't have these problems. I think my game plan is to investigate whether I can get another wheel for a reasonable amount of money, if I can, then I will go that route, if I can't then I will have to rebuild what I have.

The front hub is okay, and the spokes are okay, but there is a lot of rust on the rim, really the rim should be replaced. I will count up the spokes and see if I can get another rim and transfer the spokes over. Otherwise I may end up needing to swap the rear rim for the front, which I think is in better condition.

I need to pull the cranks still, and then start working on cleaning up the frame and getting the rust spots fixed up. Then I will need to start putting things back together.

I am planning on taking a break from this series next week, as it may take a while to get the frame cleaned up and the paint touchup work done,

The bicycle rebuilding project part 1

2010-05-11T19:53:00.001-04:00

This will be an occasional series about a bicycle I picked up, my upstairs neighbour was throwing it away, I asked if I could have it, they said sure, and I put it on my side of the garage.

This will be an occasional series about a bicycle I picked up, my upstairs neighbour was throwing it away, I asked if I could have it, they said sure, and I put it on my side of the garage.

It has sat in the garage behind a pile of old lumber and junk, I was originally going to ask him about it, it hasn't moved in at least 7 years, looks to be about my size, so I will do some work on it, and see if I can bring it back to riding condition. The photo here shows it, as I made the initial assessment, the first step will be to get the dirt off the frame, to see what I am dealing with. An initial dirty assessment and lots of experience, there are a few parts that will need to be replaced, brake pads, cables (some look rusty), tires, tubes and chain. I need to see what size the tires are, that are on it, I'm guessing 27” x 1¼” this size wheel is not used anymore, but the tires and tubes are still available, strangely enough. The problem is that some wheels of this size were chromed steel, and chromed steel rims are not a good idea these days, particularly in damp or wet weather.

The first part of the plan is to remove the dirt and accessories. Then hunt over it for a tubing sticker or a model name/number. Steel bike frames come in various qualities, from what is now termed gas pipe, very heavy tubes with the same thickness throughout, to double butted tubes (thinner in the middle then the ends) made of complex alloys that have the strength of steel, but the weight of something lighter. These are usually identified through a sticker on the frame. The other thing I need to hunt down is rust, if a bicycle frame has a little surface rust, then it's usually okay, however if there is bubbled paint or thicker rust, then the frame is structurally compromised, and that means it's dumpster fodder.

There are two approaches to restoration, there is museum restoration and functional restoration. Let me describe the difference. Museum restoration is when it is restored to like when it was brand new, only parts that were original to that model can be used, these can be very expensive and takes years to find. Functional restoration is when it's restored for actual use, this means that parts may be changed for ones that are nothing like the original parts, simply because the part is easily available. I will be heading toward a functional restoration, it's likely that I will remove the bar tape and replace it, because there is no way of getting that foam type bar wrap clean.

A debate continues

2010-05-05T00:01:00.000-04:00

Last year I posted I was going to check out some of the new fixed grain films, as these new style B&W films, could result in some better photographs. Well, I am starting to wonder, if the next phase of that project will ever happen. Because I find at this point, 5 months into the year, I have yet to shoot any film. All the shooting so far, has been with the digital camera. I expect this trend to continue, not because it is somehow superior, but that I don't see myself doing much wet printing.

A well exposed and processed black and white silver print, from a well exposed and processed black and white silver film, is pretty much impossible to beat, especially if the negative and print are the same size. That has long been my opinion, and I can't see that ever changing.

When you don't wet print, then the answer for the film shooter, is to digitally scan the negative, then process the result and print it digitally, or make it available online. This process does not always work well, the scanner needs to be very good. One of the best was made by the now defunct Minolta, which leaves only the Nikon models of which there are 2, and both of them exceed the cost of a decent digital camera body now. You might be able to find a used one on the market, but the Nikon's have a good resale value and the Minolta's have out of production long enough now, that parts may be difficult to find. You can still get slide duplicators that allow you to digitally photograph film, which might work better then the scanning process, still though digital slide duplicators and scanners give you the problems with digital imaging, without the benefits.

Digital does have some benefits, the ability to immediately review your work for example, the ability to shoot as colour, and convert to B&W later, even if the process doesn't give ideal results. It does have the ability to try different filters to see which one you like best, you can take 5 or 10 images, with differences to get one or some to turn out well, for example one image to get the highlights and another the shadows, and combine them. You can get 300 photos on a single roll. Modern camera systems are much lower weight.

Digital also has some problems, first is that there is no long term storage solution, CD and DVD-R type discs of low quality may degrade in a fairly short period of time. How long the discs can last in the real world, really depends on a couple of things. One of those is how long the physical disc can last, the other is how long you will be able to get devices capable of reading the disc. Even if a disc lasts 2 Billion years, if 20 years hence there are no devices capable of reading it, then it's still not usable. If you think about that, 20 year mark, in 1990 you could purchase a computer that had a 5¼ inch floppy drive, discs were commonly available everywhere. Today, it's impossible to buy new 5¼ inch drives, and discs, except possibly on the used market. Data that is stored on those discs is now lost. I think I tossed out the last of mine a few years ago, and the drive with it. Neither computer here has a 3½ floppy drive either. I'll probably go through the discs and dump most of them.

This weeks photo is of some rocks by the Humber bay on the short of Lake Ontario.

Changed our look

2010-04-28T19:16:00.003-04:00

I have changed the look of things around here, I thought the old look was getting a little boring, I hope you like this new one. This also allows me to post wider photos for the wider monitors that are now more common.

Playing with Photos

2010-04-28T00:01:00.001-04:00

When your laid up and unable to do very much, you tend to look for those projects you can do, and play with them a bit. Photo manipulation is one of those things that I can do, so I start to play with it. One of my favourite techniques is to take a new photo and make it look old.

You need to know what an old photo, done well looks like, if your thinking very grainy and blurry snapshot from Grandma's Kodak Instamatic she used in the 1960's and 70's. That's not what I mean by an old photograph, I mean a photograph from the early 20th century. Many of these still look quite good.

The first trick is you need a photograph that can look old. For example a picture of a modern automobile and a person in modern clothes, will not do. So you need an image that could be from that period. Fortunately for me, nature photos tend to be timeless.

This
photograph of a Great Blue Haron, could have been taken in 1909 as easily as when was taken in 2009, except that it's digital and in colour. So can we make this photograph look like it was taken in 1909?

The first trick though is we need to get rid of the colour, which isn't as simple as it usually is. Usually I take a special Gimp plugin, pick the film I want to emulate and let the plugin do it's magic. Film in 1909 would have been Orthochromatic, very sensitive to Blue, a little less to Green, but almost blind to Red, so we emulate that by using the decompose function, which splits the image into 3 separate colour layers, red, green and blue, then reducing the opacity on the Red layer to 10%, the Green layer to 90% and leaving the Blue at 100%, then we flatten the image back to a single layer. You will notice in our print how the reddish hues are quite dark,

The next filter I apply is a grain filter, film, even the fastest has some grain, without it, we can't be convincing, in this case it's very little. The next step is to tone the photograph, most common of the time was Sepia, this essentially replaces metallic silver in a print with silver sulphide, which is more stable over time. It's done in the lab by adding a pigment derived from a cuttlefish Sepia officinalis that lives in the English Channel. We can emulate this as well, by using colour mapping and a sample of the tone we want.

The last part, we need to set the proper size, because modern photographs tend to be a 2 x 3 image ratio, when 4 x 5 would have been more common then. So we resize our photo to the proper ratio. I shaved a little off the bottom to get a more even 2000 x 2500 pixels, giving us a 4 x 5 ratio. Interestingly enough 4x5 is still a common printing ratio, in B&W work. If you think that borderless photographs are a relatively recent phenomenon, in 1909 most prints were contact prints, often obtained by putting the negative on top of the paper, then a piece of glass, and shining a white light on it, for the exposure time. Borders came along later when enlarging began and you needed a way to hold the paper flat, without putting a glass surface between the negative and print. This was at first done using an easel that covered the edges of the paper, leaving an unexposed border around the photograph.

If you go to my Photo Bucket page, which you can reach through the side panel then you can see the full size photos. They are reduced size here for compact loading.

Another Grab Bag

2010-04-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

I am feeling slowly a little better, and expect that to continue, been walking a little and the bandages are gone.

The photo of Theo is now retired, I don't really like this avatar, but am searching for a better one.

There was a question raised in a comment about the sizes of photos posted here. The posting unfortunately contains portions not in English, so I disallowed it to go through. The question though is valid, and I will answer it here.

Photographs can take up a lot of space, online, and some readers may be using low-speed Internet services. I intentionally therefore reduce the size and quality of photographs for the blog. I am planning on changing this slightly, in that the full size photo will be posted on Photo Bucket and then add a reduced size copy for here.

No photo this week, while I search for a new Avatar and continue my recovery.

More on Healing

2010-04-14T00:01:00.000-04:00

It was a year ago, this week that Theophilus left us, you can go back to last year as I wrote a lot about that at the time. The photo to the right will be retired after this week. We do still miss him, and I think to some degree always will. It is time though to move on.

I continue the healing from my hernia surgery. The incision looks good, and the powerful pain killer drug bottles are getting to the bottom, so from here on in, I will be using regular pain drugs, not as powerful.but the pain isn't that bad. We are now almost a week post op, there is a fair amount of swelling, but the doctor warned me about that, and that the swelling can take as long as 2 months to go away. Because I am required to lift a larger amount at work, I can't return to my regular duties until June. Another 6 weeks away, other activities can slowly return, over that time period.

Thanks to all those who have helped me over the last week in my recovery, Doctors and Nurses made my time in the hospital a good one. Lots of local friends have dropped by, some bearing food and other gifts. Thank You's to everyone. Special thanks to our remaining Cat Bart, who hasn't left my side since I got home, and a very special thanks to my better half, Pamela for putting up with me.

Next week I will try to get back to more normal things. For the photo, one from the Remembering Theo series last year. The full photo of the avatar.

A change of Topic Followup

2010-04-09T14:57:00.001-04:00

Okay my surgery went well, and I am now going through the recovery process. I was going to post this yesterday, or have my better half post it, by with the good drugs you get after surgery it fell between the cracks.

More on this and our regular topics next week.

A Change of Topic.

2010-04-07T00:01:00.001-04:00

Originally I was going to do a ride report.

I was scheduled to have a hernia repaired in June, this has changed, they are doing it this week, I have the pre-op done at the Hospital on Wednesday, and the surgery on Thursday. No lifting, and no physical exertion and no cycling for 4 weeks. This means 4 weeks off work, I guess the doctors will assess things then, and if everything is healed up properly, then it's back to normal, if not, then they will tell me how long this needs to be extended.

At least I don't miss the middle of the cycling season.

There will be a posting on Thursday evening about how things are going. My wife may be posting that though, it depends on whether I can move to this end of the house and sit in the office chair.

The photo is the only thing that survived from the original posting idea.

Grab Bag

2010-03-31T00:01:00.000-04:00

This is a grab bag of little things, rather then one big topic, as none of these is big enough to stand on it's own, but they have all been rattling around my brain, so I' bottled them up, something that will become a semi-regular feature around here.

For those of you used to my weekly rantings, the lead time has long been a day or two, maybe three, I am planning on increasing that, so some stories may get a little old before they end up posted. I will try to adjust them as I post them, so they are not too far behind.

This summers cycling season, like several seasons before, will have a break in it, the end of June I will be having a hernia repaired, and that means 4 weeks off the bike, long enough to lose the training, that I have spent a couple of months building. This is the reason for establishing a lead time, if I do need time off then, I will have a few weeks built up already. Like bike goals though, sometimes life has a way of disrupting the plans of man, whether those plans are good or not.

One change for this year, is that I no longer have bike distance goals, I always seemed to establish them, and then end up at some point, falling behind, far enough that there is no hope in catching them, so like my infamous New Years resolution of not having a New Years Resolution, making it hard to break, if there is no goal, then there is no goal to fall behind. There is always the idea at the back of your mind, that when it's not fun, then why be out there killing yourself. Which means that when it's raining, windy, cold, sometimes your just say to heck with it, and you don't go. When you have strict goals, then you have to, whether it's fun or not, and that makes it harder.

This weeks photo is from a walk on Toronto Island we did. Note to self, always take bike to Island.

The TV Tax

2010-03-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

First a disclosure, I quit using cable about 10 years ago, when the fees seemed to go up every month, because they added another channel I would never watch. I have used an antenna ever since.

The CRTC has ruled that local television stations can charge cable/satellite companies for their signals, it seems to make sense, that if you make money off something someone else supplies, that they should be able to ask you to share the wealth. If you look at the lavishly appointed head quarters of a cable/satellite company, it would seem that wealth is considerable. Recent economic circumstances have seen a large reduction in revenues for local television stations, so they are hurting, and that is why it is now an issue.

Cable/satellite companies have a few options, they can do any one of the following:

1)Eat the cost of providing local stations.
2)Pass the cost on to their customers.
3)Drop the local stations all together.
4)Call it a TV tax and make the local stations the bad guys.

They seem, so far to be using option 4, except it's not a tax, because it's not levied by any level of government, the government body is simply allowing a surcharge to take place. Whether this works for the cable companies or not, that depends. Many people don't care about what makes up a bill, they only care about the final number they need to pay. People also have a point where they will simply say forget it.

There is also competition between cable and satellite companies, while cable companies are limited by the coverage areas, satellite companies are not, a satellite company wanting to compete, could decide to eat the cost, making their service cheaper, others might drop local stations completely. I expect at least one to get a receiver designed that can attach an antenna for local channels and use the satellite for other stations.

I expect the whole thing is moot, because within 10 years we will see a huge change in TV, because the Internet pipe is getting fatter all the time, and that means that I expect that the next generation of TV will have a network card (or wireless network card) built in, and television stations will stream their programming to the Internet, rather then using over the air or satellite distribution. How this affects things, depends on how the programming rights work, often a station gets domestic rights, so for example a US station can broadcast in the US, which can be received outside the US, but only if your near enough to pick up the signal, while a US station in Buffalo can be received in Toronto, it's can't be received in Edmonton. How the streaming would deal with this, depends on the protocol that is developed to deal with it.

This weeks photo is a Peacock, from a walk we did on Centre Island, at the petting zoo that is there.

Getting the Bike Ready for Spring Part 2

2010-03-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

This talks about the hard parts, most don't require much maintenance, other then the regular during the season maintenance. A few things to check though, that you might not regularly think about are that the steering doesn't have places where it sticks, it should be smooth from side to side. You need to also grab the cranks and sty to wiggle then side to side, to make sure they are tight, all bolts should be checked to make sure they are tight,

Some folks like to do extra chain maintenance, like removing the chain and giving it extra cleaning, often this is by taking a soft drink (pop or soda ) bottle putting in some degreaser and removing the chain and putting it in, shaking it and then removing it, to rinse and dry before it gets lubed again. They then sometimes soak it in lube, some people will boil it in wax, and do various other extra treatment to it. Personally I don't bother, chains, especially the 8 speed chains that I use, are cheap, so putting a little degreaser on a rag, and running it along the chain, I then check it for length, if the stretch over 1' is less then 1/8th inch, I put a drop of chain lube on each link, let it sit for a minute and then wipe off the excess.

Some folks will rebuild hubs and bottom brackets, cartridge bottom brackets and hubs don't need it, and it's debatable whether conventional ones, that are working really well need it either.

The frame should be cleaned and closely inspected, your looking for bubbled paint and cracks. Bubbled paint means rust, from the inside out, for steel frames this can mean an expensive repair. Steel, aluminum and titanium frames that have a crack at a weld, may be repairable, it needs to be inspected by a frame builder. Cracks at other then joints, are rare but possible, it often can not be repaired. CF frames are generally made as a single piece, and it's difficult and expensive to repair CF, any crack means that the entire frame needs to be replaced. If the frame is under warranty and the warranty includes at least part of the labour of moving parts over, it may make sense to do so. If the frame is not under warranty, then repairs can often be very close to, if not exceed the cost of replacing the entire bicycle.

This weeks photo is another recycled one from a ride report.

Getting the Bike Ready for Spring Part 1

2010-03-10T00:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I was going to do a review on the bicycle show, but ended up not going, so will need to move on to other things. From some people who did go, it wasn't a big as last year, and was more parts oriented then anything else. The spring show serves two purposes, it allows retailers to clear inventory that has been sitting all winter, and allows companies to introduce new models. I feel having gone the last couple of years that the companies are more and more using the Internet to introduce new products, so bicycle shows will end up like, photography shows, more as a way of putting a lot of retailers under a single roof to duke it out. The problem is, do people really want to pay $12 to visit a bunch of stores, clearing out their older junk or not. The only true show anymore is the automobile show, how long it will remain so, is up for debate.

With spring weather, it's time to dig out the old bicycle and give it a look over, to get it ready for the spring riding season. Bicycles consist of hard parts and soft parts, this week I will deal with the soft parts, hard parts, next week.

Tires, look at the tread, if it looks overly worn, then replace it, realize that a rear tire will last only about half as long as a front tire. If you rotate bicycle tires, it's done very differently from a car tire. Essentially you take the old rear tire and remove it, rotate the old front tire to the rear, and buy a new front tire. Never put a worn rear tire on the front, if a front tire is overly worn and blows, you will go over the bars, and probably end up buying your dentist a new Porsche. When I replace a tire, I replace the tube as well, putting the old tube into the spares cache. Not all tires are created equal, there are really 3 broad categories, road tires, cross tires and off road tires.

Road tires, do not need much tread, they tend to be fairly smooth, because they don't have a flat surface they do not need the tread to channel water away from the middle, a smooth tire means that there is more rubber to meet the road. They tend to be narrower and higher pressure then off road or cross tires, because of rolling resistance. Width tends to be less then 28mm, and pressures can be 7 bar or higher.

Off road, or mountain bike tires, have large knobby treads to get good grip on soft ground and mud, snow or loose surfaces that are common once your away from asphalt. If you ride these tires on asphalt you will hear a whoop whoop whoop noise, that's pedalling energy being wasted by the knobs on the tires, being pushed out of the way. Tires tend to be 50mm or wider with pressures of 5 bar or less.

Cross tires, have a deeper tread then road tires, so that they have better off road performance, they tend to be a in between on width, but are still smoother and have higher pressure then off road tires. Widths are typically 32 – 48mm and pressures run from 5 ½ to 6 ½ bar.

Saddles, the saddle is also a soft part, it should be inspected to make sure that the rails or bars underneath have not bent or broken, the surface should not have sagged, and the height should be checked. I put a mark on the side of the seat post on my bike to make sure the height is always correct. If you have not ridden since fall, expect that your butt will need to reacquaint itself with the saddle and that the first couple of rides may hurt. Saddles that hurt for more then the first 100km or so of regular riding, may need to be replaced with a different model.

Grips or bar tape, should be checked to make sure they are firmly attached, there are no holes or gaps. With grips they need to be replaced. With tape it needs to be removed and reinstalled.

Cables, you should check the housings that they are not damaged, and that the cables run smoothly through them. A cable that is nicked, kinked or rusted should be replaced. If the rust appears to go inside a housing then the housing should also be replaced.

Brakes come in about 4 different types:

Rim Brakes:

Brake pads, pads should be checked, almost all brake pads have a groove them, to channel water, when you can't see where this groove is anymore, the pad should be replaced. Brake pads should always be replaced in pairs, if one pad is worn more then the other, the brake should be checked to make sure the wheel is straight and the brake is properly centred above the wheel in all directions. It's easiest to check these brakes with the wheel off.

Other brake types like disc brakes and hub brakes, vary by make and model, check with the manufacturer for instructions on pad checking and replacement.

Next week we deal with the hard parts.

This weeks photo is from last winter, it was taken at The Beach off Lake Ontario, they use rock as a break water, sometimes broken concrete and other building materials are also used.

Spring is coming.

2010-03-03T00:01:00.001-05:00

Now that the Winter Olympics are over, it's time for spring.

The days are a little longer, and they are getting warmer, there is technically about 18 days until spring, the chances of getting extremely cold days, with frigid nights are getting less and less every day. Although it's still winter, January and February are the very cold periods, and usually by early March, the weather is looking up. You can now expect the sun to rise before 7 and set after 6, where only a month ago it was 7:30 before you could expect to see the sun, and it was set by 5:30. It gains about 7 minutes per day this time of the year.

Every year I set myself cycling goals, I will not be doing that anymore, every year it seems something gets in the way, one year it was the April bike crash, another year it was my back blew out, the last couple of years it rained way too much. This year it's a Hernia that needs a repair, not sure when that will be, hoping for sooner rather then later though.... Currently I am riding small amounts so that the legs stay in reasonable shape, at least for now.

This weekend is the annual bike show, which I will be attending, a review of the show will be coming next week.

This weeks photo is a summer one, just to remind everyone what is coming.

One change that I am putting in place, the update time is changing, the update will now be posting at 12:01 AM, rather then at 6:00 AM, the reason for the 6:00AM update time, does not exist any longer, so I am changing it.

The light at the end of the tunnel.

2010-02-24T06:00:00.001-05:00

I was going to comment on the Olympics, but decided that far too many electrons are already being sacrificed there. It is now the end of February, days are getting longer, the chances of massively cold temperatures are quickly diminishing, next week is March. Spring is technically less then a month away. I don't know what the spring will bring, warmer temperatures, for certain. After a winter that brought much less snow then the year before which threatened the records set the year before that for snow load, we had little this year. I hope that means that we will have a drier summer, after two years where that pattern seemed to be, "What do you get after 5 days of rain? Monday"

I have really not come near the distance I wanted on the bike this winter, for a couple of reasons, one is I never got motivated for it, I will probably wait for the spring when I switch to outdoor riding, to reinstate the goals. I find the trainer can sometimes be difficult to get into, I really need to pick up a couple of training videos and see if that helps. Because of the lack of snow, I did manager to get an outdoor ride a couple of weeks ago. I do need to replace the fork on my bike, and raise the bars much higher as well, which is a project waiting for tax refund time.

The digital camera has been cleaned, and is now ready for spring, I hope to get some nice distance rides this summer, and hopefully can get some more photos like this weeks photo, this is another from a ride report from last September 20th,

Digital Imaging file formats

2010-02-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

My digital camera is capable of several file formats, the best quality is usually RAW, essentially the sensor data is kept as is. Tricky images can be easier to get working copies from using the RAW format as there is no processing of the image data done.

There are advantages and disadvantages to doing this.

You need Special software on your computer then converts this raw data into a usable image. RAW files are to a large degree proprietary in that they are largely specific to the sensor itself, which means that when a particular model of sensor has been discontinued for a long time, it may get dropped from the software used to decode the images. This may mean that you are limited to using an older version of the software, which may not be compatible with a newer computer.

Software that loads images can take much longer to do so, and will ask questions about how to do the conversion. Images typically need to be converted to another format if you want to print them or use them on the Internet.

Raw files are typically not compressed, so a 10MP sensor means a 10MB file, this can mean that you end up using a lot of disc space for images. If you backup your images then it can mean that your using a lot of backup space for these images.

One other problem with RAW files, the camera's internal computer software may know about problems like dead pixels and compensate for them. Something that external software does not. If you look carefully at some of my photos from the last couple of years, especially big sky photos, you will notice that there is a strange mark on some of them, these are from RAW files. The mark is not present on JPEG images which are processed by the camera's computer. It must know about this and compensate for it.

For quite a while I used the RAW mode, I have switched back to using large fine JPEG images again, they are easier and faster to process, Smaller and the format is likely to be around much longer. JPEG has an issue, it's a lossy format.

Let me explain that one, in data compression there are largely two methodologies, lossy and lossless. Lossy will take information that isn't really needed and remove it, lossless will compress information in a manner that uncompressing restores the original completely. Lossy tends to give much better compression, JPEG is a lossy format, some other famous ones are the MP3 audio format. Lossless compression of images tends not to work well and compression is often much less then with JPEG.

The only issue is if you decompress and re-compress an image, it's a little like a photocopy of a photocopy, each generation becomes worse and worse until it's no longer usable. This can largely be avoided by treating the initial image as you would a negative, you keep a copy of the initial image in an archive, if you edit it for some reason, then you make a copy of the original, and do your edits on the copy, and toss it after. This is essentially what I have always done. Photography as an art is a two part art form, theatre and music are this way too, the negative is the script or score, the published image or print is the performance. In digital the original capture is the negative, and is kept as is.

In the completely analog days, I rarely kept print notes, because the mood I was in at the time of printing could be vastly different from one time to another, one could be nice and bright, and another dark and moody, even though it was the same image. That thinking still holds in the digital age, so the final processing can be vastly different one time to another. Starting from the same point, the initial camera image is easier. For example look that these two images, I kinda faked it here, the first one is dark and moody, the image looks cold and uninviting. The second one is bright and cheery with an old fashioned warm feel to it. It's the same in camera image. Just edited different ways.

The images as posted have been resized and the quality reduced to fit the online publication medium. I do this so that the images load faster on slower computers with slow Internet connections, Believe it or not, some people still use dial-up connections. Large photos can therefore take a long time to load.

if you ever see an image that you are interested in, then send me a message and we can talk about obtaining an original copy.

Why are photograph sizes what they are?

2010-02-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

Why are traditional photographic prints 4”x5”, 5”x7”, 8”x10”, 11”x14” and 16”x20”? I also wonder why when they developed early roll film sizes they didn't stick to similar ratios?

I would assume it's because in the early days when photographs were made using glass plate negatives that they were common sizes for window panes, and the sizes just kind of stuck. Prints were largely made by contact, you put the developed glass plate, emulsion side down on the sensitized paper, then exposed to light, before processing the paper print. Even today the most common way of printing 8x10, 11x14 and 16x20 negatives is by contact. There actually are a few larger sizes, but the cameras are quite unwieldy, although the prints are something to see.

They really should have been adjusted at one time or another as 4x5, 6x7½, 8x10, 12x15 and 16x20. It begs another question though, 120 size film has image dimensions of 6cm x 4.5cm, 6cmx6cm and 6cmx7cm as the most common ones (there are wider used in panoramic cameras), none of them fit the print sizes exactly. Then we have 35mm, it has a different aspect ratio again, and you either end up with very wide borders or cutting off part of the image.

Now of course they figured a solution for 35mm when the colour printing machines using paper rolls adopted a new size, 4”x6” (the paper is 6” wide) and digital printed on ink paper uses the same paper size as plain bond paper, 8½ x 11 which has a different aspect ratio again. When you toss in metric sizes used everywhere except North America and parts of the British Empire, it has another ratio again.

In the early days they should have fixed the ratio at a specific number and drawn all the sizes from it, for example 1:1.25. then all print sizes would use this ratio and all film image sizes would have been given the same ratio. So your 120 camera would give you 4.8cm x 6cm or 6cm x 7.5cm and 35mm would be 24x30 instead of 24x36, slightly smaller in the one dimension. 110 film would have ended up as 13mm x 16¼mm instead of 13x17.

I think historically it didn't really matter, nobody thought that different aspect ratios would be an issue, and although a bit of a pain, it isn't really, the common digital cameras use a ratio similar to 35mm.

DSLRs now have 3 different sensor sizes, 35mm size, which is strangely referred to as full frame, there is APS-C which is smaller and APS-H which is roughly in between the two. I expect that in the next 5 years or so, APS-C will disappear, as you add increase the pixel count on the same size sensor, the sensitivity is reduced, because the pixels get smaller, so each pixel sees less light. Every sensor has a native sensitivity, to get higher you need to add amplification, the more amplification, the more noise you get. Noise reduction software can help to some degree, although it has limits. At some point you can't add more pixels without getting a more then acceptable amount of noise at the outside of the EI ranges. The answer of course is to make each pixel bigger by using a larger sensor.

This week I began converting some of the older parts of the digital collection to JPEG from CRW which is the Canon RAW format, this is to save space, and will continue until I get almost caught up, so I can backup everything to a DVD.

This weeks photo is one of the ones that has been converted, it's from a sugar bush we visited nearly 3 years ago, and was digitally aged.

The Next Generation of Film

2010-02-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

I promised in a couple of forums to do an analysis of a theory, so here goes.

Digital imaging has a problem, the problem of good enough. Will the next generation of photographers be happy with digital imaging? Once you can move pixels around to the point your satisfied, will you be happy to do that for 50 years? I don't think so, and I think many of them will look toward film as a way of doing more. Just as many serious 35mm photographers look to medium and large format photography as a way of getting more, digital photographers will use film as a way to get more. The question is will they simply move to 35mm, or will they skip over it to medium and large format, Will they move to colour or skip over it to black and white in an artistic manner. There are subtleties in a black and white analogue image that digital simply can't recreate, and I don't think ever will.

The issue with film is that the number of factors is so huge, more so with black and white then with colour, changing the developing agent or the ratio of developing agents can give very different results, different films, different papers, different paper developers, all affect the results, and there is a huge learning process at each level, so people who want to learn and hone the craft, will get bored with digital, far too quickly. Just like colour film users would get bored with colour, letting the lab do the work.

People who predict that film is dead, are not counting on things like this, so we need to consider that film is far from dead, it's not that popular now, but I expect it to see at least a partial come back, at least in the serious amateur and professional areas. It shouldn't be about the media, but the result.

Having said all this, this
weeks photo is actually a digital one, from last winter, converted to B&W, with a blue toning applied.

A tough month on Pedestrians

2010-01-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

First a note on comments, comments to this blog that are posted are moderated, which means they do not get posted until approved. I occasionally will get a comment in a language other then English, I don't really enough of any other language to properly moderate these comments, so I delete them, the blogger software gives only the options to approve or delete. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

In the Toronto area it's shaping up to being a tough month on pedestrians, since the beginning of the month, some 14 pedestrians have been killed when hit by cars. When I first started writing this, last week it was 9 in as many days, Currently at 7:30 Tuesday evening it's 14 killed, and everyone is asking why.

As far as I can tell only 2 people were jaywalking at the time, although local police and media seem to be concentrating on pedestrians being careful when crossing streets.

Most of these collisions have been in suburbia, where there are fewer pedestrians, and motor vehicle speed limits tend to be higher, there also tend to be more and higher speed limit violations. It really comes down to driving at a speed to match conditions. Speed limits are engineered so that a well maintained vehicle, with a good driver, in excellent conditions, should travel at that speed or slower. Most people when they think of conditions, think only of weather and possibly motor vehicle traffic. However pedestrian traffic is also a condition. Another condition is distractions, there are a lot of distractions in the modern motor vehicle, a list that is getting longer over time.

I think the real solution, no urban area except for freeways, need to see lower speed limits, and more enforcement, even if that requires a return of photo-radar. All city speed limits above 50km/h should be eliminated, with the default at 40km/h and school zones at 30km/h.

Again this week I am using a photo from the existing online collection, this one from the Lake Ontario series

Haiti

2010-01-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

What happened a week ago in Haiti is a terrible tragedy. The rescue process is mostly finished, so the cleanup begins. When a country or a city has been utterly destroyed, whether by natural or man made means, there is great opportunity to transform it into something better then what you had before.

The president of Haiti was unhurt, he needs to discover how much of a government he has left, this then becomes the provisional government, with elections in unrepresented areas to build back to full compliment. As for the people, there should be zero unemployment for the next decade, anyone without a job, gets one in construction, first to demolish whatever needs to be, then to rebuild. Not only for the practicality of rebuilding, but it's part of the healing process as well, to put the country back on course, a better course then it was on. This is really the hard way of doing things, let the world supply knowledge and materials, but let the local people do the work.

Unfortunately, the easy way is to let the world do everything for you, yes you get new infrastructure, but it's what the world thinks you need, rather then what the local people want. Haiti is long known as the Caribbeans poor cousin, with high unemployment, a government that is corrupt and everyone less then dirt poor except a few high officials, is probably what they would end up with, unless the country takes control of the rebuilding itself.

You can make massive improvements, for example, installing a subway system in Port-Au-Prince so that people can get to jobs elsewhere in the city, quickly and efficiently. Doing this kind of improvement is actually quite reasonable cost wise, when you need to dig up the streets to replace utilities. New infrastructure can be built using the earthquake proof technologies that have been developed in the last 50 years or so.

This weeks photo is from a ride report, I may use a few of these, for those who don't read those reports.

What Will 2010 Bring - Part II

2010-01-13T06:00:00.000-05:00

My personal 2010 thoughts, these are not resolutions, the only new years resolution I make, is to not make a resolution, and after 5 or so years of doing that, I haven't broke... wait a minute...

This year I plan to take more photos, the digital camera needs it's sensor cleaned, something that the film cameras, even after 30 years have never needed. Last year I took some 700 digital photos, and about 100 film ones, so about 800 total. I would like to take about a roll a month of film this year.

This brings me to the next thing, the film testing project, I would like to continue and even finish. I do need to buy the film, and that will probably be 2 or 3 rolls of TMY and 2 or 3 rolls of Delta 400. I wonder though if my D76 is still good.

I want to do more cycling this year, last year was pathetic, I want this year to be more then last year, which should be easy, as last year was about half what I wanted to do. We will have the trainer for the full year this year.

In the spring, I will need to replace the back tires on both bikes, and the fork on mine, suspension forks are typically designed for riders in the 70-75kg range, I am currently heavier then that, closer to 95kg. The fork therefore is starting to fade, and will need replacing at some point. I am debating about putting on a set of trekking bars, the new fork will allow me to raise the bars about 5cm or more, so new cables and housings will be needed, if I replace the bars, that will be an opportune time.

The photo of the week returns this week, this photo was taken in a park in 2007, about this time of year, I don't remember where I took it, but was intrigued with the image, so I took it.

What will 2010 bring Part 1

2010-01-06T06:00:00.001-05:00

Most likely the fits and starts of the economic recovery will settle down, at least in Canada, but I don't think the problems are entirely finished, here. The US is still in trouble, and the government there doesn't seem to be interested in trying to bring it's deficit under control, and that means that it will continue to borrow money at a staggering rate. While Canadians are miffed about a $25 or $30 billion deficit, the US deficit for 2009 is forecast at over $1 Trillion, almost 3 times what it was in 2008, which shows the issue with deficit financing, in good times, it makes things much worse, in bad times.

I think this will mean that the US dollar will run into problems, and that we will again see parity in 2010, which means that companies that sell to the US will again be whining about how the dollar makes their goods too expensive in the US. Of course they wouldn't think of new and emerging markets for the same goods elsewhere.

Oil, I think again we will be looking at higher oil prices, probably in the $100/barrel range, demand is down in the US, but growing elsewhere, as the recovery continues it will mean higher demand, and that means higher prices.

I'll have my personal forecast next week, this is short, but I need to get used to the new schedule of updates. The Photo of the week returns next week.

The year in review

2009-12-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

This update is a day late, sorry about that, I was working on some computer upgrades, and didn't get the time to do it yesterday. I doubled the memory and retired the old CRT monitor, the new monitor is an LCD, so it will use a lot less energy and provides a nice bright and large picture. The CRT has been getting dimmer and dimmer over the last couple of years now, and I have been turning up the brightness, there is no more brightness to add to it.

Well Christmas is past now, and that means the end of the year is here, and as for 2009, well good riddance. Winter felt like it would never end, then in the spring Theophilus was hit and killed by a car. Summer, well I am still waiting, we seemed to ease from spring into fall, without much in between. Fall was rather lacklustre and before I knew it we were looking at the Christmas silly season, and now that that is over it's winter again.

The big news story was the economy of course, here in Canada it was not a good economic year, but the government of the Tories seemed to handle it reasonably well, recovery seems to be here and the worst is over. For our neighbours stateside it was a complete disaster, in that along with the economic downturn, which some experts are blaming on the record high oil prices the year before, was combined with the banking fiasco and the near collapse of the auto industry that got propped up with huge amounts of government money and loan guarantees.

The green movement seemed to really take off this year, although that seems to be a bit silly, in that even those who sell toxic waste are getting on the green bandwagon. How you can sell a 2500kg SUV with a 6L gasoline engine as green is beyond me. More on this in a couple of weeks.

For 2010 I am moving the weekly update from Sunday morning to Wednesday morning, although I will probably write it at the same time, this will mean that when there is a holiday and my personal schedule gets wonky it will not be late. The photo of the week returns next week along with the final year end bike distances. I haven't riddeen at all in December, I had a cold that seemed to drag on ad nausium and then was so busy with work, I might try this week, but I don't know.

Next week I will attempt to look forward at 2010, I hope everyone had a good Christmas and wish you blessings and prayers for 2010.

Winter Wonderland

2009-12-12T15:30:00.001-05:00

I have a winter cold this week, I almost didn't make it this far, it's a weird illness, it goes away sometimes for a week or more, then comes roaring back. It came back so severe on Thursday that I took the night off work.

We now have winter, although technically winter doesn't start for another 9 days, snow, blowing snow, ice and other winter hazards are here already. Some things you have to keep in mind for winter.

If you drive, remember winter driving rules should be in effect, on roads that are slippery this means avoiding doing things quickly, don't accelerate quickly, don't break quickly, don't steer quickly. Driving depends on traction, and traction can be severely reduced on slippery roads. This same thing applies to bicycles and motorcycles as well, although few people use either in the winter. Tires that have more grip when cold can be helpful, although on bare pavement they can wear much faster.

One needs to check their winter gear, hats, gloves, scarves, boots with soles that have goos grip, can all make being outside in cold easier. One really needs to dress like a house, with an inside layer that moves moisture through it, materials like silk and some of the synthetics work really well. Then you need an insulating layer, some of the synthetic fleeces can work really well, but wool works very well for this as well. Then on the outside you need an air proof and wind proof layer, mostly this will be synthetics like nylon that can be treated to make it water and wind proof.

Also dealing with weather is climate change, the key with pollution is dilution, when the amount of pollution is small relative to the material it is mixed with, then there isn't a real problem. What we are running into now is the amount of pollution is increasing, while the air and water it gets mixed into remains a constant, we are now approaching the point where it is becoming a problem. More on this another time.

Bike distances for November:

Total 98km, I first got this stupid cold in November and haven't ridden while I recover. Not sure what will happen with the rest of December.

And now for something completely different.

2009-11-29T06:00:00.000-05:00

Well, one weeks holiday was nice, but my break here ended up being two. for a few reasons. Now that we are into the Christmas season and I work for a courier company, so things are quite busy.

One of our TV's which has been in the process of dying for the last 3 months finally got to the point where it was unwatchable. 40 years ago, this would have meant calling a TV repair person, who would come, take the back off, look around for a moment and the replace a tube, 25 cents for the tube, and $9.75 in labour. Now repairing a television means replacing large electronic components and hundreds of dollars in labour, so you simply get another TV. The last time we got a TV it was a huge box with a large cathode ray tube in the front, This one uses an LCD, and has a couple of other interesting features.

One feature is a digital tuner, one of the best kept secrets in Canada is that on August 31st, 2011 there will be no more analog TV broadcasts. This will require either a set-top box or a digital ATSC or QAM tuner. Most cable and satellite providers have the set top box already, which will convert the digital signals to analog for older TV's.

This creats a problem for us though, about 6-7 years ago tired of cable bills that seemed to go up every month, I told the cable company I no longer required their services. Most Toronto stations now have digital broadcasts, except TVOntario, most of these are in the UHF band, and simply need a decent antenna, which can be made at home for a few dollars.

I don't get the Buffalo, NY stations which I should, but I am making adjustments to the antenna. I'll post a picture, and some notes on the final version of the antenna when it's done.

The Picture of the week will be on hiatus from now until the second week of January.
Bike distances will be next posting,

The great cycling debate.

2009-11-08T06:00:00.001-05:00

It's hard to read much stuff online without reading about the great helmet debate.

There are 3 opinions.

Helmets should be mandatory when riding a bicycle.
Helmets should be banned.
The government should stay out of it, and allow individual riders to decide for themselves.

I want to weigh in on each opinion, before I editorialize my own.

Helmets should be mandatory when riding a bicycle.

Helmets can reduce some head injuries, typically those to the top and back of the head, within the design limits of the helmet. Because of this, some people think they should be mandatory, for all riders. Helmets are good in some other sports, like American Style football, hockey and skiing. Lots of times doctors and others state that the "helmet saved your life", and the doctor must be right.

Helmets should be banned.

There is no conclusive proof that helmets are good for anything other then making the helmet manufacturers rich. They can be hot, uncomfortable and the injuries that they prevent or reduce are fairly rare anyway. Some other injuries can actually be made worse, in that the weight of the helmet can twist the neck or result in whiplash, that would not occur otherwise. Realistically the only way to prove a helmet is good in a particular situation is to do the same crash with and without and compare injuries. Helmet standards are so lax that in a serious crash, the helmet will fail.

The government should stay out of it, and allow individual riders to decide for themselves
Unlike automotive seat belts which keep the driver in place able to possibly keep some control over the vehicle, the only one potentially at harm without a helmet is the rider. Both other groups have a point and each individual rider should be allowed to make up their own opinion as to which story they want to believe.

I have to admit that I personally fall into the last group, I wear a helmet when riding, I didn't always, the first bicycle helmets came out in the late 1970's, I did a lot of riding in those days, without a helmet, and I never got a head injury when riding.

This weeks photo Is one of my all time favourites, Mist on the water in Algonquin.

Today - Sunday - is my wifes birthday, and I would like to wish her a happy birthday and many more.

Next week I am on Vacation, and I will not be posting an update, here. See you all in 2 weeks.

Looking to the Future Part 1

2009-10-31T23:54:00.003-04:00

I've read a number of reports about a coming event, and heard a few people talk about an issue, and this week will weigh in on that issue.

In 1956 M. King Hubbert (1903-1989) an American Geoscientist predicted that the production of oil would follow a bell curve, production would increase until half the oil had been removed from the ground, at which point you would be at the peak of the curve and production would decline until you run out.

This theory is often proved out for individual oil fields, and sometimes whole regions, others have predicted that it will occur on a planetary basis as well. Many people have theories of what will happen when the world hits the top of the peak, an event that will probably go unnoticed for up to 10 years, Expect that it will flatten out for a few years and then take a few more before we realise that we have peaked. Dates run from December 2005, to 2030.

A lot of people consider that realizing that the peak is a historical event will be catastrophic. I don't know about that, it will lead to higher oil prices, as supplies start to decrease and demand doesn't. Higher prices will attenuate demand to some degree, This will be an ongoing process, as supplies continue to dwindle, prices move higher and that attenuates demand further.

Oil is used in several areas, personal transportation being one of them, gasoline has over the last 100 years been very inexpensive, In 1979 gasoline hit the atrocious price of $1 per imperial gallon, moving to around 25 cents a litre in 1981 when gasoline prices in Canada were converted to metric. Prices hit a high of $131/L only 13 months ago, before the recession caused a massive drop, although I see they are climbing again, and hit $101 this past week.

The problem in North America is that most cities designed in the last 100 years have been designed to be dependant on a private automobile based transportation system, this leads there to being long distances between things, It's not uncommon that people drive 25km in one direction for work, 25km in another direction for shopping, before driving 40km home.

People ask, what about the electric or hydrogen powered car, Neither of these technologies create energy, An electric car has a lot of problems, first is where do you get the power from, well electricity can get generated from a number of energy sources, coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind. Coal is a poor choice because it is dirty, so is nuclear. Oil is in limited supply, and so is gas, which leaves hydro, solar, wind. Hydro is basically falling water, it's a reasonably clean source of power, but limited, which is a similar problem with solar and wind, capacity is very limited, and using a 1500kg device to move a 100khg load around, is never going to be efficient enough, in a post oil world.

Reducing the distance greatly increases the efficiency,reduce it to the point where a more efficient method of moving around, such as the lowly bicycle or on foot, makes it even more so.

I'll continue this at some point, with how we would heat homes in a post oil world and how we would deal with agriculture, but will leave off here.

October bike distances I am still working on processing, so will post that next week,

In honour of Halloween just past, this weeks photo is an abandoned house from a few years ago, at night it was really creepy, in that you could hear noises from the wind, and it sounded like movement inside, then again maybe something was moving inside ,,,,,,,

Getting Cranky

2009-10-25T02:08:00.001-04:00

When you travel by bicycle, one thing is certain, and that is that eventually things will break down, we had such a problem last week, when the left crank fell off my wife's bicycle, this is a problem, the little bolt inside had loosened and fallen out, somewhere, we back tracked but never did find it. I am guessing it had fallen out some time previous and been lost.

Once upon a time, cranks were heavy one piece affairs, often made in Ashtabula, Ohio in the USA, they were made of heavy carbon steel, now only found on children's bicycles, as some really, really cheap adult bicycles, they are rare on even moderately priced bicycles. They were largely replaced on higher end bicycles with cottered cranks. If you see one of these, it looks like a bolt goes through it with a nut on the end. The “bolt” is actually the cotter, it's specially shaped, although because of the cotter they need to be heavier or strengthened steel, and that meant by the mid 1970's they were starting to be replaced. The “new” technology was the square taper, basically the spindle that goes through is square on the end, with a taper so that the square is larger toward the middle, with a bolt hole in it. The crank often made of aluminum has a square hole, so by forcing this on, and tightening it with a bolt it works quite well. A special crank remover tool can be used to remove the crank.

Both of our bikes use square taper cranks, so off to the shop for the bolt. Then putting the crank back on, I realize that the proper size socket for my socket wrench is too thick, so off to the shop again for the proper tool. I basically have a collection of standard tools, and can do about 80% of all bicycle repairs myself, when I run into a problem like this, that requires a special tool, then it gets more interesting. Some tools, like a crank remover with the proper size socket included, are relatively inexpensive and will probably be used again in the future, so I buy the tool. Other tools that would be used rarely, I get a shop to do it.

This weeks photo from a walk along Kew Beach on Saturday.

Should bicycles be licenced?

2009-10-18T06:00:00.001-04:00

This is an interesting question, there are a couple of good reasons why, and a few good reasons why not. The reasons why, I will deal with first.

Most cyclists say no, many car drivers think yes, because they see people on bikes flaunting the rules of the road. This is really a straw man argument, because drivers also pick and choose what laws they want to obey and not obey. This is because it's impossible to enforce all of the traffic laws everywhere at the same time. The other reason has to do with theft, if bicycles are registered, then it becomes much more difficult to ride a stolen one, because the police can run the plates on any bicycle, and get flags on stolen bicycles. Selling a stolen bicycle is also difficult, because when the buyer tries to register their bicycle, it will come up as stolen.

So why not, well the main reason is economics, the people who would be hit hardest by such a tax would be poor people who can afford to buy a used bicycle, but may not be able to pay a large annual registration fee. The fees for registering bicycles would need to be high enough to cover the cost of setting up and running the registry.

Probably the most workable would be a system that piggy backs onto that used for motor vehicles. There are a couple of problems with that, bicycles do not have VIN's and serial numbers may not be a good way of differentiating between bicycles. Bicycles of different manufacturer, model and year may have the same serial number. An old bicycle that has been repainted may not have the manufacturer, model or year identifiable, components may have been changed so that even if the manufacturer can be identified, the model and year can not. You would need to assign a bicycle a VIN, this would need to be applied in such a way as to be non-removable, but applied without affecting the integrity of the bicycle. The kind of licence plate that you can apply to a bicycle is fairly small, at the most 10x20cm.

Many cities have registered bicycles in the past, such programs are often set up with good intentions, but don't provide the intended benefits at a recoverable cost. When budgets are constrained, it gets scrapped. I'll wade into the helmet law debate in the near future.

This weeks photo is from a walk in a Earl Bales park. I'll post up the other photos this week, sometime on Flickr.

Ebikes, yikes!

2009-10-12T06:00:00.000-04:00

In Ontario ebikes which were covered under a pilot project are now legally considered as road vehicles, I'm on the fence about this. Ebikes really fall into two categories, the first is essentially a bicycle, with a battery and electric motor, it's fairly light weight and can reasonably be pedalled if the rider wants to. I don't have a problem with these, in fact there have been a few times, I wouldn't mind an electric boost myself.

The second category is essentially a low-powered electric scooter, these I am not so sure about, they have pedals, but those may not be of much use, in that they more intended to allow it to qualify under the law, then to actually be used. Legally they can be up to 120kg, and must be speed governed to 32km/h maximum. They can use bicycle lanes, do not require a motorcycle licence, but do require a helmet. The difficulty is, when there are interactions between a 120kg ebike going 32km/h and a 15kg bicycle going 12km/h. Will the heavy ebike be able to force the slower bicycle into the ditch or worse traffic, to try and commandeer the bicycle lane.

Where I am on the fence, is that I would rather see a person on an ebike which is relatively low polluting, then in a big gas guzzling, pollution belching SUV. I say low polluting, because a lot of electric power comes from polluting sources, so an ebike is still responsible for some pollution, but then so is a rider on a bicycle, who has to eat food that is produced, shipped and prepared using energy. I also think that in a collision a 120kg ebike at 32km/h is going to alot less damage then a 2000kg behemoth going 70km/h. Of course the exercise potential of an ebike may be considerably less then a traditional bicycle.

I think electric bicycles will longer term prove much more practical then electric cars, considering that the automobile is horribly inefficient no matter what the power source.

Bicycle season is now ended for this year, cold, wind and rain, have pretty much put a damper on it.

This weeks photo is from this time of year in 2006, was taken somewhere in Algonquin.

The great closing up begins.

2009-10-04T00:30:00.001-04:00

Although fall is just underway, the great closing up for Winter is beginning, flowerbeds that have been carefully weeded and watered all summer are beginning to be left to their own devices. Lawn chairs that have been casually placed around the yard are being carefully stacked, the patio table is being rolled into it's corner of the garage or basement, to hibernate, the umbrella that was in the middle of the table is being tied up and placed in it's corner. The yard lights that provided some light on those evenings in the back yard, are being carefully pulled up and cleaned, the batteries removed and packed away. Plants that will be kept over the winter are coming inside. Summer is over, and this year it was a dud. It rained most of June and July, rained so much that one of the major streets collapsed, construction being what it is, it's still closed off as I type this, and could be for the rest of the year. The middle of August it quit raining, for nearly a month.

The days are getting shorter, a little over a month ago, you could bicycle until 8 o'clock without lights, now you need them by 7, and it's full dark by 8. I see a few trees now where the leaves have changed. This past week we made the trip to the thermostat and flipped the switch from cool to heat, as temperatures dropped to the mid single digits. Other folks flipped the switch to turn on the furnace, and some lit the pilot light. If your firing up the furnace or switching from AC to heat, it's a good time to replace the furnace filter if it's a disposable or clean electronic filters. Winter coats that have languished since spring are being brought out, for some people they are taking the coats out of cleaners bags, others are scrambling to find someone to replace funky zippers.

I'll be doing some of these things, will also be oiling up the bike trainer, and moving it inside, the bikes will be going up and down as we switch between indoor and outdoor riding, this will take place until the snow flies. The trainer will come in and be checked out to sit in it's corner to wait to receive the bikes. This year in a room with a TV, I might try to pick up some training DVD's so that I can train with an expert over the winter.

This weeks photo (above) is actually from last fall, the leaves have not done much this year yet, not sure if it will be a good or bad year, yet. I've heard reports both ways.

Bike distances for September, we did well this year, 182km which was better then the 171km from 2008, but still far short of the 356km from 2007. October was 18km last year and 134 in 2007, I think using the trainer we should be able to beat both.

Next week is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, if I get to write something ahead of time, I will, if not I may be a day “late”.

The bicycle as a photography platform

2009-09-27T08:35:00.001-04:00

The bicycle is the perfect photography platform ever invented. It gives you the ability to move fast enough to cover a decent amount of ground, but slow enough that you can still see the sights you want to photograph.

Yesterday was a good example, we got up early, and headed out, which isn't always easy for me, as I work nights. We rode to the subway, and then downtown and out again to Kipling. The we rode down Kipling, not exactly a good example of a well maintained road, down to the Lakeshore. We then headedEast, almost getting lost in Col. Samuel Smith Park. It was threatening rain all day, and Pamela's bike did not have fenders on it, so rain is not good, as it produces the infamous "skunk stripe".

I saw this wild flower, not sure what it is, I need to get a plant guide, as we are heading to Word on the Street on Sunday afternoon, it's something I will look for. Some folks would call it a weed, and it would be if it showed up in the home garden, but as to it's location beside the trail is not intentionally planted, it's a wild flower of some kind. From about the same point we saw the worlds shortest rainbow, I almost took it for a sundog, but it's not quite the right colour combination, but is the time of year I have seen them before. It's now technically fall, and the days are getting shorter, the temperatures are much cooler, and soon the fall colours will be making their grand appearance before we sink into the monotone grey of winter.

I was surprised to see this guy around, I thought they would be heading south now. The great blue heron. was fishing. These birds are extremely patient, they can stand in one spot for hours and hours. From the shore with a 300mm lens, I was able to get up close, without disturbing the bird. I kinda wished I had the monopod though, I always forget it when heading out on these adventures.

Another place a telephoto lens can be handy is portraits, A telephoto lens tends to flatten the plane a little, gives the subject some more space, I think this was around 70mm, sometimes a zoom lens can be beneficial.

We headed downtown and made a stop at Mountain Equipment Co-op for another bike bottle and a set of fenders for Pamela's bicycle, not the same as mine, we will need to see how effective these fenders, made from recycled pop bottles work in the wet, as the rain held off until late evening. The last photo in this set was taken by Pamela with my camera from out in front of MEC, I like this shot a lot.

Next week we should have September bike distances, it's blown past August already by a signficant margin and has surpassed last year.

Last summer ride report

2009-09-20T06:00:00.001-04:00

Originally I was going to write about fall, as this is the last official weekend of summer, I thought a summer activity would be much more appropriate, a bicycle ride report.

My (much) better half and I awoke at around 5:30AM Saturday Morning, we left the house at 7, and headed toward the subway. I don't much like using the subway for part of the trip, I feel it's cheating, but if we had been riding more this summer, we could handle the 50km extra that we would have done today, so the subway gets us at least closer. At seven am, Saturday morning it was 7°C, a little nippy, you can tell fall is in the air, there were widespread frost warnings around the city, in fact I think some low lying parts of the city got a touch as well. Wilson Station is one of a shrinking collection of stations that are not bicycle friendly, there are no elevators, hauling 20kg of bicycle and gear up and down stairs and escalators is not something I enjoy, it's also not wheelchair friendly, and that is something that needs to be addressed at some point.

Our
starting point was to be Main Station, a quick zip down toward the lake and Martin-Goodman trail, then out on the Outer Harbour East Headland also known as the Leslie St Spit, home to Tommy Thompson Park. I did a ride report from there before, although that time my ride partner was different. I also have more information as to why it was built, that shows the previous wasn't quite correct, apparently the newer info. is that the original purpose was to build a breakwater for the Outer Harbour, and that millions of tonnes of construction debris were used as such, convenient..... Add some clean fill (read dirt) on top and you have a nature preserve and park. After riding around the park we headed back up to Queen St. As we needed to refuel, had a nice breakfast at Sunset Grill then headed back to the subway and home, total distance a little over 31km.

I've included some of the photos from the day and will post more on Flickr later on.

Cycling and Safety Part 2

2009-09-13T06:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I talked about bicycles and cars and what society can do about it, and what society and government should do about it. If you assume that government will do the right thing, or the practical thing, over 5,000 years of human history proves you will be waiting a long time.

So what can cyclists and drivers do about it?

If you take a defensive driving course, and it should be required of all drivers, the first thing you learn is, to always assume that in a vehicle to vehicle or vehicle to person interaction, that the other person/vehicle operator is an inexperienced moron who isn't paying attention.

Let me explain that one, your driving/riding along and come to an intersection, the other direction has a stop sign and a vehicle is approaching, they don't seem to be preparing to stop, so you prepare to stop, if they don't stop you do. Yes you lose your right of way, yes you lose a few seconds, but think of the time and money wasted, and the pain you might have to endure if they run into you at 50km/h. The key isn't what to do when there is a collision, but how to avoid the collision in the first place.

When drivers must deal with bicycles, remember that the law is that a bicycle must be as far right as practicable, on a two lane road, this means typically about 1m out from the curb. There is a bunch of reasons for this, first being that closer to the edge of the road the pavement tends to be in rough shape, there are drainage openings, utility access panels, puddles, pot holes, garbage and other hazards. The 1m also puts them in a more visible position for you. Those utility access openings, tend to be extremely slippery when wet, so cyclists typically go around them. Bicycles are far more sensitive to bad road conditions, they also see them much more easily, so they need that space to go around those hazards. That 1m also gives the bicycle somewhere to go if they are in danger. By the same token, you need to give the bicycle at least 1m on the left side, assuming that a bicycle is actually the same size as a Smart (or similar sized) car is probably a good idea. On multi-lane streets for all practical purposes the bicycle owns that curb lane, again just like a small car would. Few lanes are wide enough that if a bicycle takes up the right 2 metres, that you can pass without at least partly changing lanes, most urban lanes are 3.5m wide, so if a bicycle is taking up the right 2m, your car needs to be less then 1.5m wide to pass, considering that even a Smart (or similar sized ) car is closer to 2m wide, you need to at least partly change lanes to pass. If it's not safe to pass, then don't, if this is a common occurrence, then start pushing city hall for bike lanes. One sticking point, I often hear about is stop signs, for a driver it takes about 4 seconds between the time they stop and the time they are ready to go. For a bicycle it's closer to .4 seconds, you may think the bicycle hasn't stopped, when it actually has.

Now cyclists, first stay off the flipping sidewalk, it's for pedestrians, nobody expects you to be there, so don't be. There are more collisions at sidewalk intersections then anywhere else. Second, the same rule of assuming that the other person in a bicycle – motor vehicle or bicycle – pedestrian interaction is an inexperienced idiot who isn't paying attention, applies to you as well. You need to be predictable, this means you stop for stop signs and red lights, for a stop sign you don't need to sit there for a week, just long enough to determine it's safe to proceed, this is a very short period of time. Know how a 4 way stop works, few drivers and even fewer cyclists do, basically it's this:

All vehicles must stop, whoever stops first goes first, if more then one vehicle reaches the stop at the same time, the rightmost vehicle goes first. This means if the bicycle stops first, the bicycle goes first, if the car stops first, the car goes first. It's quite simple, but almost nobody seems to remember this once they have their licence.

Another thing, be visible, this means don't hug the curb, stay out about 1m, this puts you closer to where a driver will expect to see another vehicle. Be visible, the more lights and retro-reflective material you have on you, the better. Yellow and acid green are good colours for bike jackets, and retro-reflective material on the back is even better, if applying it yourself make a square on the back then put an X through it, this pattern is used in construction vests, it indicates that a person is there, and most drivers know this. If you have panniers, a mesh construction vest folds up really small and is extremely light weight, so keeping one in a pannier prepares you for poor weather and night riding. At night always use your lights. Some riders like to ride Ninja fashion, they remove all reflectors from the bicycle, they dress all in black, and don't use lights, then they ride the wrong way on the street. It's a good way to get a ghost bike in your honour.

Always ride in the direction of traffic, if your afraid of getting hit from behind, there are several kinds of rear view mirrors available, there are mirrors that mount to the handlebar, typically on the left side, there are also mirrors that mount to eyeglass frames and helmets, handy if you have multiple bicycles and use a single helmet or wear eye glasses. You do need to make sure the mirror is positioned properly. To make sure, find a car (should be easy), from 1m away you should see at least part of that car in your mirror up until you can see it clearly in your peripheral vision. You don't want to lose track of cars that are close to you. Ideally you should also see just the edge of your left pannier, as a frame of reference. Like any curved mirror, things are often closer then they appear.

Some more things, at stop lights it's best to shift slightly to the left and line up with the cars, this prevents the dreaded right hook, where a driver turns right, right in front of you. It is also a courtesy to traffic turning right, in that they can go to your right and make their turn, without having to wait for through traffic. If there is a right turn out lane, and your not turning right, stay in the right most through lane. Trucks/buses are also an issue, any vehicle more then about 10m long needs to reduce the angle of a right turn, they do this by turning slightly left, then making a hard right, if you come up to a truck or bus that is has their right turn signal on, then stay behind them, they are not looking for you, they are concentrating on getting 12m+ of truck/trailer around a curve designed for a less then 9m long vehicle. Getting right hooked by a car, can hurt, getting right hooked by a 22,000+kg truck, that's often fatal.

As we head into fall, it's time to check that bicycle lights are in working order, there will be more evening and night riding from now until the snow flies, ending the season.

The picture
of the week was taken from about 40m way from the photo from last week

Cycling and safety

2009-09-06T06:00:00.000-04:00

A big thing on everyone's mind here in the city is cycling safety, after a cyclist was killed in an altercation with a car. The fact the car driver is a former provincial cabinet minister makes this more news the most similar stories.

The most cyclists can expect from government is another call for mandatory helmets. While I think helmets are a good idea, I don't think that it should be mandatory, first because there is no scientific proof that they actual help, and second that it's better to prevent a crash then to add safety equipment to deal with a specific injury in a small number of crashes.

Some crashes are due to operator error on the part of the cyclist, those will happen regardless, hopefully with slight or no injury, so you don't perform the same error twice.

The biggest issue where crashes are preventable is interaction between motor vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. Sidewalks are to segregate motor vehicle traffic and much slower pedestrians, and while a bicycle is relatively fast compared to a pedestrian, it is very slow when compared to a car. Many people who ride bicycles then are afraid of being run over by cars, and therefore take to sidewalks, which are actually more dangerous then the cars.

The issue is that a road is engineered so that vehicle operators have a proper line of sight at intersections, this is accomplished by not allowing structures and plantings within a certain distance of the road. Often the sidewalk occupies part of this space, meaning the line of sight, from the sidewalk is much less. Other vehicle operators are expecting that the sidewalk is only occupied by slow moving pedestrians, and do not watch out for faster bicycles on that sidewalk. There are many more collisions at sidewalks then on roads.

One solution is to again segregate some space for bicycle traffic, this is often known as the bike lane, they often require a long and difficult approval process, where the most vocal groups seemto be drivers and store owners that think only someone rich enough to drive everywhere will shop at their store. Since the space that would be taken up by the bicycle lane is usually currently used for street parking, it makes the process much more difficult. The only real solution to this dilemma is for the province to set new road standards that put bike lanes on streets over a certain size. For example a street with a speed limit over 40km/h or that is more then 9m from curb edge to curb edge, would require a bicycle lane.

Although none of this segregation would be needed if the dominant thinking in North America wasn't that streets are for the exclusive use of motor vehicles, which pay for those streets with their gas and licence fees, Those taxes actually don't come anywhere near the cost of maintaining roads, the city pays it's costs out of municipal taxes which are paid by driver and cyclist alike. Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if the city speed limit was a flat 30km/h and that fines for exceeding that speed limit, by even 1 km/h was a minimum of $200.

Another problem is that nobody is trained adequately to deal with other types of traffic, if all cyclists obeyed the rules of the road, and drivers were willing to provide space for other road users, we would be in much better shape. Almost nothing is said in driver instruction about dealing with bicycles, and even some driving instructors don't know how to deal with them properly. A public service campaign dealing with the issue might help as would police actually laying charges when drivers and cyclists do disobey the law, this would require that cyclists carry photo ID when riding, a small price to pay for safety.

Bike distances for August, a paltry 82km, I am already half way to that point for September.... Not sure how that happened, mostly the weather I think. I expect things to soon stabilize when we head back to the trainer when the snow flies.

Part of Septembers distance is from a ride Pamela and I did yesterday, we took the subway to high park and then headed by bicycle to the West, this was done very early in the morning, and this weeks photo is from this trip. As we get into late summer, early morning light tends to be more yellow, and have a more dreamy look to it, so even in full sun light this scene is not overwhelmed.

Some ramblings II

2009-08-30T06:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry to my readers for last week, technical difficulties, the difficulty being that the time I usually write this, I couldn't think. That's my story and I am sticking to it.

Monday is the last day of August, the end of summer, is usually after the labour day holiday, the following Monday. We didn't really get a summer, we had a late spring stretch through July, the coldest in 17 years, and into August. When we had about a week of normal summer weather, which was followed by a nasty storm that spawned 7 Tornado's 3 rated F2, 2 Rated F1 and a couple of F0's, then early fall seemed to start.

After last year, when summer also seemed to skip the area, I am wondering if this is all part of climate change, while I am not sure I believe that all climate change is created by man, Science tells us that the planet goes through long cycles of temperature changes, these cycles are about 40,000 years and that the last warming trend started about 10,000 years ago. This would imply, that we are in a warming trend, and will continue to warm up for another 10,000 years before maxing out, and starting to cool again. The history of man, really is less then that, the Hebrew Calendar is currently in the year 5769 So what things will look like 10,000 years from now, it's hard to know, cold and snow will be much more limited, many current species will no longer exist, the evaporation and rain cycle will occur much faster. While I think it's mans arrogance that lets him blame himself entirely for climate change, our polluting ways do not help.

This weeks photo is from our front garden.

Next week the bike distances from August, and so far it doesn't look good....

Bicycles and streetcars do not mix

2009-08-16T06:00:00.001-04:00

This is kind of a ride report, at 6:30 AM my wife woke me up, she wanted to go out for breakfast, the breakfast place is about 12km away so we were cycling there, we were out of the house a little after 7 and there at 8:11, of course the place was closed until 9, so we went to another place. Had a nice breakfast, we needed some bike stuff and decided to visit MEC which isn't too much further, we biked down to Spadina and King, and visited the shop. One of the pedals on her bike is a little funky, cheap plastic pedals often have non serviceable bearings, so you have to replace them. We picked up a set of BMX pedals for $8, pedal wrench, another small tool we needed, and a mirror for her bike. Go to the checkout and my bank card doesn't work, walked to a bank and it worked there. I need to visit the bank again on Monday, this will be the 3rd card in 3 months, the old one lasted almost 12 years. We went back and got our stuff, decided the mirror was too complex to install there, and we would install it at home. We were going to then head further south, and loop around to pickup the subway and cheat on the way home.

King Street has street cars, therefore it has street car tracks, on the outside there is a groove for the wheel flange to run along, while wheel flanges are about 2mm wide, the groove is about 40mm wide, perfect to grab a bicycle wheel. I know how dangerous this is, and she should know as well, but probably had forgotten, she wanted to turn left on King. This is most easily done by boxing the corner. Stay to the right, cross the street, turn the bike to face the other direction and then right straight again. She crossed the lanes, hit the groove beside the street car track, did a move that would make a dancer proud, and went down. A couple of bruises and some abrasions, and although sore, the prognosis is very good. No doctors needed.

No bike damage other then a crooked seat, and her headlight came off, she was carrying her digital camera at the time, it seems to work, although a seam in the plastic did open up slightly. I assembled and installed the mirror, and replaced the funky pedal, the other one needs some penetrating oil to help break it loose, so we can return to having a matched set. I'll keep the good old one as a spare.

This weeks photo is of a piece of machinery I found at the distillery district in downtown Toronto.

Of music and thngs

2009-08-09T06:00:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid I learned to play the violin, it was my fathers instrument, and although a serious amateur he was never a professional, although he did play in an orchestra. He played occasionally another instrument as well, the mandolin. He had at one time a very fancy one, which unfortunately ended up in the wrong place and was broken. I've never tried playing one, not sure how easy or hard it would be, although the basic notes are the same.

For a while, I have been thinking of selling the violin, and getting a mandolin, probably 4 or 5 years now. It is a better instrument to accompany, and can be better combined with other instruments like a guitar. While the violin works well with piano and in orchestras, it's not an instrument that you often "jam" with. Well, at least I haven't. So, it's something to certainly think about, and something that I expect to be posting more about in the future.

For those that do not know, the mandolin is a direct descendant of an instrument called a lute, modern instruments are kind of a cross between a violin and a guitar.

This weeks photo is from a recent trip to Edwards Gardens, shot on film with the FC-1

Film Selection Process Part Three

2009-08-03T06:00:00.000-04:00

This week is more of a comparison, I have two images here the first one is shot on B&W film, it's a little soft, because the scanner is not at it's best when scanning from a negative, I don't have the time or materials to make an enlargement for scanning, which would be a better way to go, perhaps I will at a later date, and I will update the image.

the second image is a digital image converted to B&W, The sizes are a little different due to the image format, larger sizes are available in the film test album on Photo Bucket. One thing you will notice is that the B&W negative has better tonality, and the digital image slightly blows out the highlights in the lighter coloured flowers on the right side of the image.

I really don't like the digital image as much, it's okay as a colour image, but needs a lot of playing with for a good B&W image, which is rather effortless with the film image.

This image is our photo of the week for this week. July is now over, and for bike distance, about the same as last year, 148km this year, 150km last year. Year to date I am at 680km, 148km behind last year and well behind the 1058km the year before. I need to really crank it up if I want the 1000km this year. August weather does not look good for this, so far.

Dreaming in High Park

2009-07-26T06:00:00.000-04:00

For the last 27 years, The Canadian Stage Company, has done Dream in High Park, a Shakespearian play done as it would have been done at one time, in an open air theatre, where the "seats" are a hill side. In this particular theatre, they cut a series of short concrete retaining walls into the hillside at one point, probably to prevent erosion and to make it easier to sit, for the audience.

This year they present The Tempest. I enjoy live theatre, there is something extra when the actors are close enough to almost touch. I think the actors, being able to feel an audience, also can do a nicer job of convincing that audience that the characters have come to life. The Dream modernizes the costumes and sets, but uses the script to a large degree, as written in the 1600's, with mostly the original words and rhythm. This can be difficult for modern tongues, but strangely I always find myself forgetting that the language is not modern English.

If your in the Toronto area, check out Dream In High Park You might find that you will enjoy this kind of theatre as well.

This weeks photo is another from the test roll recently done as part of the film project, I have another roll of FP4 ready to process, so should have the next part of that series for next week, along with July bicycle distances.

The end of an Icon.

2009-07-19T06:00:00.000-04:00

Nearly a month ago on June 22nd, Kodak announced that Kodachrome film would be discontinued, that sales would end when the current stocks ore depleted and that processing would cease to be available on December 31st, 2010. After 75 years, there would be no Kodachrome going forward.

The digital war on chemical photography had claimed another victim. A film that was the recorder of countless family outings and the bane of many forced to sit through slide shows and home movies, will be no more. The film that got it's own song, will pass into history.

Kodachrome is a unique film, it is technically a 3 layer black and white film, where the colour is added during processing, It's a rather complex process, and there is only one lab in the world left that can do it now. Although there never were that many in the first place. This complex process though lead to a film that was very stable, unless it was projected many times, the colour would not fade. It was grainy and slow, but got the job done. Although I never used it, not sure why, I am sad to see it go.

This weeks photo is of a visitor we had, this rabbit came into our front yard, and started chomping on the grass. Naturally I grabbed a camera, and started taking some images. I used the digital camera in this case.

A film selection process, part two

2009-07-12T06:00:00.000-04:00

Having processed the first roll of FP4+, I noticed a couple of things, I don't think I gave the roll enough development, as the rebate, was very faint. The rebate is the printing along the outside edge, this should be dark and fairly easy to read. The fact it was quite faint, would indicate not enough time in the developer or a developer that was not warm enough.

This particular roll of FP4+ has been in the freezer for a couple of years, although it is technically past it's expiry date, it actually looks pretty good. I am not going to post every image or even most of them, I will post a few examples. Once I get into the test films, I will be posting images that illustrate my observations.

First my workflow, in this case. I shoot the film in a Konica FC-1, a camera I have used for nearly 30 years, photographs are of nature scenes that I run across and think would look nice. Films are then processed in Kodak D76 developer for the recommended time, based on using the same 1L of stock solution, until the developer expires. The roll of film is then assigned a roll number. Roll numbers consist of a type code (a letter, A is digital, B is B&W film, C is colour negative, T will be colour transparency, followed by a year code. Year code 00 was 1970, so this year is year code 39, each roll is then assigned a sequential 3 digit roll number within that year. Each negative is then assigned a 2 digit frame number, based on the frame numbers in the film rebate.

Each image is scanned using an Epson 2480 flatbed scanner that has been hand focused using black electrical tape applied to the bottom of the frame holder, few flat bed scanners are properly focused. This will be an on going series, that will go away for a while, then come back again over the next 6-10 months.

The image this week is from this first roll, other images can be viewed from Photo Bucket There is a flower hiding in there somewhere, I really need to get a plant field guide so I can identify some of this stuff.

A film selection process, part one

2009-07-05T06:00:00.001-04:00

For many years I have, off an on used a film camera for much of my photography, and the film of choice was almost always FP4 or HP5 these films are made by Harmon Technology in the United Kingdom, under the Ilford brand. The two films are now referred to as FP4+ and HP5+ but have not changed that much since I first used them in the 1980's.

These are what are referred to as traditional grain film, traditional grain means that the silver salt particles are random in size and shape. In the 1970's they discovered tabular grains, these are very thin and have a larger surface area, it was in the mid 1980's that we saw the first tabular grain emulsions. The film grain that appears in a photograph is less obvious at the same film speed. Well, I am planning on looking at these films seriously. Harmon makes the Delta series of films and Kodak makes the TMax films, Fujifilm make their Neopan films using the same technology.

So begins an experiment to see whether I prefer the Ilford, the Kodak or the Fujifilm products.
In order to provide a benchmark I will use the venerable FP4. The film will be developed in Kodak D76. Both Ilford and Kodak offer a 100 and 400 speed film and both will be tested.

Kodak D76 was chosen because it's available, it's relatively inexpensive and it's some what of a standard. Ilford makes a similar developer known as ID11, the price at the store was higher though, so I selected the Kodak product. These developers are sold as powders, and are mixed with water for use. The film is then fixed in Ilford Rapid Fixer, which is a liquid,

I mixed the working chemicals on Saturday, and processed a roll of FP4, I will shoot and process a couple more, before getting 2 rolls of Delta 400 and a single roll of Delta 100. This process will be repeated for the TMax film, the Fuji Neopan is only available in 400 speed, so only that will be tested. I will be posting more parts to this series as I test the various films. All are tested at the recommended or box speed and the standard developing times provided.

This weeks photo is, I think Jackson's Creek in Peterborough, ON it was originally shot on Kodak Tri-X film using a Zenit E camera, some 32 years ago. It was a year later that I switched to shooting primarily Ilford Films.

Bike Distances for June are in, 182km total, better then last years 177km (barely) but no where near the 337 did in 2007. Hoping July is better, but not so far.

Ride Report June 27 2009 - updated

2009-06-28T06:00:00.002-04:00

This is another ride report.

Originally the plan was to hop the new GO train to Niagara Falls, decided to check the schedule before heading out, and found the next train wasn't until after 4PM. So Plan B, we were going to go to High Park. We live in the North central part of the city, we decided to go down Keele Street. I thought traffic would be awful, but the road would be good, turned out that the traffic was good and the road was awful. Keele also ends at one point and starts up again a few blocks South. The hills were not bad, and it took us just under an hour to travel the 16km to the park.

It was a hot sunny day, and we just about melted, but actually considering the conditions, my better half looked happy on our arrival at the park. High park is a nature photographers dream location, it's in the city, but has a huge variety of plants and several species of animals the duck pond was kinda murky looking, did get a shot of a rabbit in the midst of his lunch I took too many photos to get them organized in time for this entry, I posted the photos on Photo Bucket so you can click to view them there. That will have to suffice for a photo of the week as well.

We took the subway home, tired and hot. Total distance was 21km with about 1:16 saddle time, about 6 hours total time. I think doing it again I will take the camelbak.

Next week I will post the ride totals for June.

A mixed bag

2009-06-21T06:00:00.001-04:00

Technically I am still on vacation, I took last week off, due to my vacation starting, I'm off for another week, but did get a chance on Saturday to post anyway. This week is a mixed bag of stuff, so pardon me if I get off track in a couple of places.

We my birthday this week, I am now officially 2 years from being half a century. Some days it doesn't seem like it, but time marches on.

I thought on my vacation that I would get lots of riding in, the first half had several rain days and a couple more that were just not nice, so I am still off the pace of last year, and behind the year before that. I use a database to keep track of distances, so I can easily enter the information and keep track of it. Originally it was a spread sheet, thinking of converting it to an open office database with forms and reports and all that jazz.

Today (Sunday) is the first day of summer, normally we have a spring warm-up that occurs in late May or early June where it gets much warmer, temps move from the high teens and low 20's to the mid to high 20's and low 30's even. More importantly the over night temperatures move from the low teens to the upper teens and low 20's. It's late this year, but looks like it may come this week, we shall see though. The Strawberry crop is about a week late this year because of it.

Toronto may be facing a city workers strike, which will mean no garbage collection, and many city services will not be happening. It could be difficult for private services like shelters, hostels and other such services if the city run shelters and services are not available. Most of the private services depend on donations which are already thin this year do to the economic downturn.

As summer starts, we need to be more careful of the weather, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes and other such storms can occur more frequently, this weeks photo is one from the Algonquin collection. This tree was struck by lightning, and not only broken but burned quite a bit as well. If you do a lot of outdoor activities like cycling, hiking, golfing it's a good idea to get and use a weatheradio. Weatheradio is a radio system run by Environment Canada (The National Weather Service in the US runs a similar program), that will issue warnings of severe weather in the area.

Okay, back to my vacation relaxing now :)

Gone Fishing

2009-06-14T06:00:00.000-04:00

Well, yours truly is on vacation, I will be back next week.

Thinking about Cameras

2009-06-07T06:00:00.000-04:00

One of the issues I have with my current cameras is the weight and size when cycling. The film camera plus 50mm and 135mm lens is about 2kg, the digital camera with it's 18-55 and 70-200 zooms and big heavy battery is about 2kg. Add some accessories for each and padding to keep them from getting damaged if I crash and it adds a good 4kg to the bike. I need a smaller and lighter camera for riding.

I would have to choose a non-SLR camera, the question is film or digital? A lot of people would immediately say digital, but I am not so sure, that's the best choice. I like shooting B&W and am never truly happy with a digital B&W conversion, even though I have posted more then a few here. So a small light but manual film camera would allow me to shoot B&W film, for quality. A small digital though would be more compact and in some ways more flexible, although the more modern digital cameras do not seem to have manual modes. What makes digital B&W difficult is that it's very easy to blow out highlights, meaning very light tones that are close to white, turn white leaving no detail.

I am not sure what I will end up doing with this, such a camera would need to be inexpensive so that if it gets destroyed in a crash it's not a big loss.

This weeks photo shows what happens when a digital image is converted to B&W, the centre of each flower is slightly blown out. It's much harder to do this with B&W film images.

The monthly bike distance for May was a paltry 129km mostly due to the nearly relentless wind, still better the April's 49km (which has been beaten by June already).

I have this week to work, then I am on vacation for two weeks, I will try to post something here, but it may not happen, we shall see.

The return to film

2009-05-31T06:00:00.000-04:00

I am planning on returning at least partly to using the film camera this summer. One of the issues with the digital to black and white conversion, is it doesn't always work well. Black and white is all about tones and shades and even with some pretty good software to accomplish this, it still doesn't look like an image shot on film.

I do need to locate a couple of lenses I stashed away, and dig the film out, and begin shooting it. I have almost always processed my own black and white film, will be trying something I have not tried in many years, a developer made by Kodak, their HC110. It's reasonably inexpensive and lasts quite a long time, so it's better for lower volume shooters. This doesn't mean I will be getting rid of the digital camera, which will be used for colour, but for Black and white, I will be trying to return some to film shooting. I don't have the space for a full darkroom at the moment so images will eventually end up digital, but there are subtleties that are only accomplished when an image is shot on black and white film.

I thought in honour of this to use a film image from the archive for this weeks photo. This one is a quiet pond, that I found somewhere, I like the dreamy quality of the original image, it was converted to digital by scanning the negative directly, and the tone was digitally applied.

Bike stats for May will be posted next week.

First Ride Report 2009

2009-05-24T06:00:00.000-04:00

Pamela (my better half) and I completed the first ride of the year worthy of a ride report, there are some photos. We almost didn't get very far though, a person who looked way to old to do so, threw a temper tantrum and taking off a shoe, threw it into the street. It just missed Pamela, and I missed hitting it by less then 5cm.

No further adventures took place as we got onto the subway. We each need a handlebar bag though, as I end up carrying everything in the panniers and it can get a little heavy at times. For day trips the panniers are in many ways overkill, and you end up carrying more then you really should, and having to hold a bicycle going up or down an escalator that has an extra 15kg in the panniers, can be a little much. The panniers are also not convenient for holding cameras, snacks and other debris needed for a day trip.

After the subway and a short ride down Bay Street from Union Station we boarded the Ferry, in this case the Ongiara the most utilitarian of the ferry fleet this ship built in 1960 can accommodate motor vehicles, and is the only one of the ferries operating out of the Bay Street docks that runs all year around. Interesting thing about ships is how long they can operate, the William Inglis was built in 1935 and still sees regular service in the summer, even though it's 74 years old. The Trillium which was retired from regular service in 1957 and returned to service in 1976 is 99 this year. This first photo is my better half, while on the ferry to the Island.

I like nature, and I like nature photos, as anyone who follows here probably knows already. Some of the trees are already in full bloom, I don't always know what a particular plant or tree is, but I do know what I like, and I liked this next one. It's probably not original to Wards Island, there is a community that lives on the Wards Island, so someone probably planted it here.

What I also sometimes find interesting is how well some structures fit into their natural surroundings very well, like this particular bridge. There is no Toronto Island, but rather a series of smaller Islands that are close enough together to be connected by small bridges, like this bridge to Snake Island, which has camping, with a special permit.

This church St. Andrew-On-The-Lake, is an Anglican church that has been here for over a century. Some of these older structures, and many of the homes on Wards Island, fit their settings very well. More modern structures of concrete found on the more commercialized Centre Island do not. I believe they do Sunday services in the summer, and they do Weddings as well at St Andrew.

A breakwater is often a pile rock that is placed to keep waves from battering a shore, there is one by the Centre Island Pier. This particular one protects a beach, you can see off to the side. You can also see in the distance part of the city in the background.

Exploring the interconnected Islands by bicycle is the best way, nearly every house on Wards has one or more bicycles, makes you think that if the automobile had not been invented, or failed to gain traction, that this is what small town life would be like. Dozens of bicycles cross on every trip, you can see much more in a shorter span of time, then by walking, and although slower then an automobile, you see more on a bicycle. Like the Haunted Lighthouse at Gibraltar Point, to which this sign is attached. We continued West a bit, stopped for a break at a picnic bench, it was a cold wind, we then decided it was time for Lunch, and headed back toward Centre Island. After Lunch, we found a place to contemplate.

Our contemplation point is where I found this tree. One thing I like are textures, and this texture belongs to a tree, honestly, a Camo tree. I got some other pictures, which I will post over on Photo Bucket over the next day or so. We rode back over to Wards Island, caught the ferry back to the city, and returned to the subway, then home.

Total Bicycle Distance 23km, total saddle time, 1:46 we are wondering where we should go next week....

Blowin' in the wind

2009-05-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

I think there was a song by this name, lately cycling has been difficult because of the wind. Wind not only makes it difficult, but can cause safety issues as well, winds under 20km/h are an inconvenience, but can improve training in that going against the wind is similar to riding up hill, it makes you work harder. Winds over 40km/h can be very dangerous, it can blow a rider over, and into the path of other traffic. Lately there has been a lot of wind, hopefully this is a short term situation.

This weekend is the Victoria Day holiday in Canada, a celebration of the Birth of Queen Victoria, it's also considered the official celebration of the birthday of the reigning monarch, It has also become over time the marking of the beginning of summer, in that shortly there after the weather switches from tending toward cooler to tending toward warmer. The holiday is the Monday before or on the 24th of May, it's as early as possible this year, so cooler weather is still with us. The wind has also kept things feeling cooler then they should be. This has kept bike riding distances low as well, but Monday looks reasonable, and it also looks better later in the week. Debating about trying for some photos from the bike this week.

This weeks photo is a nice nature photo with gold toning, it's originally a colour digital image.

Life goes on

2009-05-10T06:00:00.000-04:00

We are slowly returning to normal around here, it's been three weeks since we lost Theo, and although the grieving process continues, we need to start getting back to normal again. So I have spent enough electrons on grieving and mourning and will not say more about it. His picture though will remain on my profile, and I will add some dates to that, at some point.

During this time, we passed the end of April, I had a bad cold the end of March, and it held on for the first 2 weeks of April, then we lost Theo, and the months riding was virtually a write off, in fact I had 205km in April 2008 and only 46 in April 2009, in fact I have already surpassed Aprils Total this month, I will really need to ramp up though, because I have less then 1/3 of the total during May. Every year I come up with ride goals, some years I beat them, other years I fall far behind and give up on them. I've already given up for this year, I had set rather high goals, and ended up too far behind. I think I will quit setting ride goals and just do it for fun, I will continue to track how I am doing, compared to last year, might even add a year before to the chart I use, so that I can see how I did then. 2007 was a very good year though.....

My photography has also suffered a little this year, I am thinking of mounting the second pannier and taking the camera to a park or two, and see how I do, weather is supposed to be nice today, so an afternoon ride is a possibility. Speaking of the weather, I expect the weather to switch to summer mode in the next couple of weeks, when the temps go from being mostly in the teens to mostly in the 20's, this normally occurs around the 24th of May Holiday, which is in a week, the holiday is early this year, so it may be after.

This weeks picture is from 2003, it's a group of trees in a forest, I forget exactly where, I know where, but I can't think of the name of the place.... It was originally shot on colour film, digitized and converted to B&W.

Remembering Theo Part 2

2009-05-03T06:00:00.000-04:00

He was a funny cat, most people have the notion that cat's do not like water, this is not entirely true, Theo loved the stuff, his front paws were usually wet, because he liked to “swim” in the water bowl. I think the real reason that cat's are often portrayed as not liking water is that a wet cat doesn't look neat and tidy, it's all about vanity. He liked the hair dryer, but not the vacuum cleaner. Our remaining cat Bartholomew doesn't care about the vacuum cleaner any more, at nearly 15, he simply doesn't care, or has learned that it will not hurt him.

Theo is the only cat I have known to really play fetch, we had these little colour feather like
balls, he would occasionally come trotting along with one in his teeth, he would drop it at your feet, this meant he was ready to play fetch. You pick up the ball, throw it and yell go. He would go tearing after it, get it and come trotting back with it. This would continue until I tired of the game and either ignored it, or wondered off to do something else.

He also loved the outdoors, lots of our pix are of him in the garden, this would be his
downfall. He rarely went out of the yard, and even when he did, he would stick to the back yards around us, harassing the dogs and scaring area wild life. The end came on the road though, part of the problem is that people like to use our little street as a drag strip, they stomp the gas off the stop signs and jam on the brakes just before the next stop sign. He was hit by a car, most outdoor cats or partly outdoor cats meet their end this way. It's another sign that the most efficient killing machine is not the gun, it's not the tank or the missile, not even a nuclear weapon, it's the automobile. I think history will look back at our current time and wonder why we were so stupid as to adopt such a dangerous machine so thoroughly.

We have really missed Theo
in the last couple of weeks, he joins the other cat's I have known here in the last 15 years, in the big kitty playground, in the sky. Blackberry (ours, aged 18) , Creamsicle (ours, aged 12), Misty (my in-laws, 17) , Dusty(inlaws, 18), Tibby (wifes aunt 19) , Teaga (aunt, 18), Samantha (aunt, 18), have fun, playing with the others little buddy....

More pictures are on Photo Bucket in the Remembering Theo album, I will return to the regularly scheduled programming next week.

Remembering Theo Part 1

2009-04-26T06:00:00.000-04:00

I'm going to do this memorial in two parts, it's mostly photos with some commentary thrown in, and I have split it roughly by time period. This first part covers late 2006 and 2007, the second part next week will contain 2008 and early 2009.

Blackberry died at the age of 18 in 2005, then Creamsicle in 2006 leaving us with only Bartholomew, who was very lonely, so in September 2006, we got a new bundle of joy, we called him Theophilus, this name comes from the Bible. A Greek doctor named Luke wrote his gospel and the book of Acts as letters to his friend Theophilus. Which means lover of God. We often shortened this to Theo.

It's strange now to think of him as being this small, in that he didn't stay small for long. Kittens can usually leave their mothers after they can take solid food, at about 6 weeks of age, and these first pictures show him about that age. They were taken on September 9, 2006 which would have meant that he was born about the third week of July that year.

Of course that doesn't last very long, by Christmas time he was much bigger he also enjoyed that ultimate cat toy the Christmas tree. Your usually just about ready to commit feline murder when you see it. We gave up after a few days though, and took down the tree and put it away. Creamsicle was another cat that loved Christmas trees. You learn after a while, we have not put up the tree since.

Of course while your yelling at them to get out of the tree, they stand there looking like an angel. This usually means you don't stay mad for long. I think the cat was placed on this earth so that people would learn forgiveness, if you can spend 4 hours decorating a Christmas tree to only have a cat tear it apart in 9 seconds flat, you can forgive just about anything.

Every cat has his favourite place to be, Theo had two, the end of the couch was one, he would sit here with his front paws draped over the edge, like the Lord over his servants. It's often said that dogs have masters, cats have staff.

His other favourite place was watching the wildlife outside, occasionally he would con Bart into joining him, sometimes they seemed the best of friends, other times they seemed to hate each other. There are some more early photos on Photo Bucket. I can't write more now without getting overly sad about our loss. This next photo shows Bart and Theo staring at something outside, I was able to kinda sneak up on them. I'm guessing Bart was placed up here, and Theo jumped up, he was a very powerful cat.

All photos are copyright, and may not be reproduced without permission.

I'll continue this next week, and after that, we will return to our regular programming.

Theophilus September 2006 - April 17, 2009 R.I.P.

2009-04-17T17:35:00.004-04:00

This afternoon our Theophilus was hit and killed by a car. I will post and honour to our "Little Priest" in a few days, I don't expect to have this all together by Sunday morning, so there will be no update at that time.

A Holy Day

2009-04-12T06:00:00.001-04:00

Today, Sunday the 12th of April is the Holiest day on the Christian Calendar, Easter Sunday, the day when we celebrate that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, after being crucified on Good Friday for our sins. Happy Easter to one and all. Christ is risen indeed!!!!

This weeks Picture is from our garden, a rare colour photo, I find these sturdy little flowers interesting, they pop up early, often when heavy frost or snow is still around, which would kill most other flowers. They are the first real sign of spring.

Still More spring stuff

2009-04-05T06:00:00.001-04:00

Well, this week I started off with a bad cold my wife brought home, I couldn't ride the bike at all, so I haven't even been on the trainer in nearly two weeks, Speaking of which, has been moved to the garage, the Hyacinths are up and blooming in the yard, this week looks like it will be very cold, snow is forecast along with temps well below normal.

I picked up another bike computer, and a light for Pamelas bike, so we will be able to ride when it's a little darker out. I need to get these installed. Our old patio lights in the back yard are all faded and broken, so we bought some new ones, the new ones are solar powered LED models, neat technology, during the day, the sun charges a battery, during the night the lights run off the batteries power. I need to remove the old ones during the coming cold snap, as bees made a nest in them last year, and cold will make the bees less active.

The bike distance I promised from last week:

Previous Year Distance: 27 km
Current Year to Date 176km
March Total: 84km.
March Goal 171km
Shortfall 87km.

Yeah I was short of the goal, mostly because I was sick for nearly 2 weeks, I think otherwise I would have been close.

The goal for April is 232km, which is a little more then the 205km achieved in 2008. This will be a mix of trainer and road distance. Trainer distance when the weather is crappy, road distance when it's nice. The tough part is that I am already a week behind....

This weeks photo is from last years garden, were going to be again there soon,

More spring stuff

2009-03-29T06:00:00.000-04:00

Took the rear wheel of the bike to the shop for a new cassette, Saturday, picked up a new chain, as the old one was getting stretched, last year.

I do a lot of the work on the bike myself, some jobs are fairly easy and don't require a lot of tools, a chain replacement needs a tool called a chain tool, or chain breaker. Chains are continuous you use the chain tool to remove one of the rivets to open a chain, you can also use the same tool to shorten a chain. The new chain, has a special link called the missing link, that can be opened and closed, handy if you want to remove the chain for some reason, like to clean stuff, including the chain.

Some jobs require specialized tools, yet are rare enough that you don't feel the need to buy the tools to do the job, so you get the shop to do it. The cassette was one of those jobs, pay $50 for a couple of tools you only use every few years, or pay the shop $5 to do the work. In this case I visit that shop regularly so, the shop didn't charge me for the installation. The chain tool was different, as it's partly an emergency tool. I haven't done it, but I have seen where someone broke a chain, and had to do the walk of shame. A small chain tool and a few spare links can mean if you break a chain, you can repair it, at the side of the road. Chain tools are available that are quite small and therefore bike bag friendly, so carrying one, and an old 35mm film can with a few extra links means that if you do break a chain, you can remove the broken link and replace it with a spare. New chains are always made too long, so when you replace one, you always get s few spare links.

Well, I don;t think I will meet my bicycle goals for March, I picked up a stupid cold, and have been unable to ride for a week, Results will be posted next week....

When I first saw this weeks photo, I thought this is what highways would look like if the car was never invented, and bicycles were the common mans method of getting around.

Spring 2009 is here ....

2009-03-22T06:00:00.000-04:00

Every week I get a report as to how many visitors we get, and this past week we rolled over to 4 digits, yes there sat the report showing 1001 visits. So thanks to all for your support, it's taken almost a year, lets see what the next year will bring!

Ah yes, it's now officially spring and we are nearing the beginning of the outdoor bicycle season. This is the time to get the bicycle tuned up for the summer riding season. Lets all hope it's not as soggy as last year.... It's also time to charge up the batteries for the lights, and cameras!

Last year we were still complaining about remaining snow in April, today about 2 weeks earlier, we were out raking up winter debris.

I have a dilemma, the bike computer is on my wife's bike, which is on the trainer, but it's almost nice enough to ride my bike outdoors, which I don't want to do, because I can't track the distance, however.
I seem to not be motivated to do much on the trainer, currently I have trainer rides Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, but it doesn't seem to be working well at the moment. The Tuesday ride is the shortest and seems to be the one I am most motivated for, but I need to get back to the longer distances, so I will shift things around a little.

My wife has a bad cold, and I think I am getting it....

The photo of the week isn't mine, my wife took it, of the results of our outdoor gardening work.,...

That's it for this week,

2009 Bike Show Report

2009-03-15T06:00:00.000-04:00

Well the 2009 Toronto Bike Show is under-way and I was there Saturday Morning, along with about 1000 other people. The show was very busy, some distributors were only represented by dealers, others had their own displays. At least one had their own display and dealer displays. Some companies had much smaller brochures from last year, at least one company (Specialized) had a much thicker brochure and another (Trek) had rearranged the split from one large brochure two years ago too three smaller ones last year, this year the split is road, comfort, mountain and the women's line is in the same book as the men's bikes. I think last years split confused people who ended up with the wrong brochure(s ).

Lots of dealers had lots of stuff on sale, this is a dealers last chance to clear out the back room of stuff from last year, it's also a big opportunity for getting new customers, whether those customers buy at the show, or after drooling over bikes, and doing a great deal of calculating decide that new wheels would be a good use for the old tax refund due in the next few weeks. A lot of clothing and accessories were on sale, a lot of clothing items had big discounts, from 40% to 60%, I picked up another pair of Louis Garneau bike shorts for $39, regular price $59, they have a different feel then my old pair. The older shorts had good quality for a reasonable price and are one of the few clothing items still made in Canada.

Last years bike show was at the end of a horrible winter, and it was a cold weekend and snowed the whole weekend. This year it was a warmish day, with a cool wind and sun shine, so I think that helped a lot of winter weary cyclists get in the mood for checking out new gear, new bikes and spending a little money. Many people do realise that although gas prices are lower now then last year, that this is a short term thing, and that gas prices will go up again, as many people do drive more in the summer, I expect oil prices and gas prices to start their spring rise soon.

Speaking of Spring, it is only 5 days away arriving on Friday at 7:45AM EST. If you ever wondered why they have an exact time for season changes, it has to do with the Earth. Planet earth revolves on it's axis, however like a spinning top, it wobbles slightly as it goes around the sun, this wobble is 46 degrees, at the start of spring it's even and the suns position is directly over the equator, at the start of summer it's at one end of the wobble and the sun is 23 degrees North of the Equator, at the start of Fall it's back at even again, and at the start of Winter it's at the opposite position of it's wobble and is 23 degrees below the equator. This is why the days get longer and shorter when your away from the equator this effect is amplified the further you are from the equator.

We are now getting more and more days that are warmer, and I am debating, if the current forecast holds to doing the first outdoor bike ride this coming week.

This weeks photo is a scene we will be soon seeing again, the wonderful growth found in summer time,

A Time to change

2009-03-08T06:00:00.001-04:00

Well, a few things this week, in many parts of North America, we are changing our clocks, the computers here do so automatically, at the proper time. Both of the computers here, connect to time servers occasionally to readjust the clocks to the proper time. Time servers are usually based on atomic clocks. Computer clocks are typically updated by the computer hardware, but the clock is a relatively low priority item, so computer clocks typically run a little slow, so by checking with an atomic clock based time server occasionally, say once a week or so, and readjusting the computers clock to match the very accurate time server, the computers clock stays fairly accurate over the long term. I think my computer does so once a day, the other one does so weekly. In either case neither computer is off by more then a few seconds.

The two computers process the information from the time server differently, in my computer which is based on Ubuntu, it keeps the clock set on Unix time, based on UTC, so it matches up exactly to the time on the time server. When software needs local time, it matches up with a table based on the date and time zone, to give you the time. The other computer runs Windows, which uses local time, it gets the time from the time server, converts that to local time to set the clock.

Personally I think that the time change should be connected to the equinox, moving to summer time the Sunday after the equinox,and winter time the Sunday after the fall equinox, but it's politicians that make such decisions, not I.

Officially spring isn't for a couple of weeks, this past week was kind of strange, Monday night it hit -15.4℃ and felt much colder, Friday of the same week and we have a daytime high of 18.9℃ in less then a week we had a temperature difference of 34.3℃ strangely enough, neither is a record for it's respective day. This is an odd time of year though, weather wise, it can't seem to make up it's mind to be warm or cold, so we never can tell whether it's going to be really warm or really cold more then a couple of days in advance. The weather people are the only people in the world, who can be wrong more then they are right, and still have jobs.

This weeks picture is of my better half, it's also from Kew Beach, the original image was digital and in colour, and I wasn't completely happy with it, I did some cropping, and converting, and now I am happy with it.

The future

2009-03-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

Well after a month on the trainer, I didn't do as well as I had expected bike wise. I had planned on going 117km, and managed 82, 35 behind the goal, but 82km ahead of last year. Most of the missing distance was from this week, I wasn't feeling well on Friday, so I missed that day, in fact I didn't go into work either. The Saturday I was trying to catch up on other things, and didn't ride that day either. Sunday is a very busy day for me, so no riding is planned at the moment, next weeks goals will be reset to match the past week, and I will try to do better in March. The goal for March is 163, but that may change based on what I can actually accomplish. Last year we managed to get in 27km in March, on the road. Right now the weather for the first 2 weeks of March is forecast to be too cold for outdoor riding, so it's expected to be on the trainer, but it does look like the 5 out of 7 days of rain weather pattern we had last year has broken. I will be moving to a monthly summary from a weekly one, as goals are often easier dealt with on a longer period, as you sometimes will be short and make up later on.

Previous Year Distance: 0 km
Current Year to Date 82km
February Total: 92km.

This weeks photo is from Kew Beach again I found the texture of these stones and rocks interesting, the original is a digital colour image.

Happy Birthday Mom

2009-02-22T06:00:00.001-05:00

My mother turns 85 on Monday, we had a party for her Saturday, saw some relatives I have not seen in a long time. A few old family friends as well, one lady I have not seen since before my father passed away 31 years ago. Her 88 year old sister was able to come, which was nice, her sister lives far away and neither drives anymore, so it was nice to see them together again.

Was able to catch up on family gossip, something that I wasn't that far behind on, as social networking has replaced many older forms of communication....

This weeks photo Is of my mother (on the left), and my cousin Adeline, I have not seen my cousin in a long while, last time I saw her she had brown hair!

Current Week distance: 30 km
Current Week goals: 30km - goal met
Year to date total: 86 km
Previous Year Distance: 0 km
February Total: 86km.

Bell Canada Owes You an Apology (and me a credit)

2009-02-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

Normally, I post my update sometime Saturday, for posting at 6:00AM Sunday Morning, often I post this late Saturday into Sunday morning, as I work nights and usually keep the most awful hours, even when I am off.

This past Wednesday (February 11th) , the telephone started giving trouble, before going out completely on Thursday, the 12th, since we use DSL for the Internet, that went out too. It was still out as I type this, 7:30PM on Saturday, with a promise that repairs will be completed by 9:00PM, a follow up call to Bell at 9:00AM Sunday (the 15th, if your following this), is that it will be back in service before 10:00PM on Monday, Iit wasn't and when we contacted them, they said everything had been fixed, but obviously they missed something, and they finally fixed in on Tuesday at 9:30AM.

So this particular update is now late, but it's not my fault, it's Bell's fault. Usually Bell Canada is pretty good about fixing problems, and they resolve problems fairly quickly, the fact that we have a 5+ day outage, means it must be a major problem, or their maintenance isn't what it once was. We tried calling our own phone, and get a ring with no answer, this isn't good. Would hate to be running a business with no phone, fax or internet service for 4 days, people might think your closed for the weekend when in reality your not. As it is the family day weekend here in Ontario, and some businesses are open Sunday and closed Monday, others are open Sunday and Monday, and still others are closed Sunday and Monday this wouldn't make things any better.

My better half and I decided to spend Saturday on the beach, you wouldn't expect Kew Beach to be popular on a day where the high temperature is -4, and other then a few joggers and dog walkers it wasn't busy..... We both had our digital cameras though and took lots of pictures though.

The picture of the week is from Kew Beach, this isn't glass, it's ice, since it's a cold and windy day, and cool after a few warm days allowed the top of Lake Ontario to melt, it's starting to freeze again, and the wind is blowing the ice onto the shore, as it hits the shore it breaks up and looks like pieces of broken glass. You can see the thin film of ice where the sun hits the top of the water. I'll post some more photos from this on Photo bucket, when er if the Internet ever comes back on....

Bicycle Training Goals for 2009

2009-02-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

Now that I have the trainer properly set up, and weather is less of an issue on whether one can ride or not, it's time to deal with this years goals. Last year I developed an annual goal, and it didn't work all that well, because of the weather. My thinking was to go month to month, but if one follows a set of rules to determine this, then you can designate for the whole year.

There are several schools of thought on building up to a reasonable level from a cold start, after an extended hiatus.

The school I follow is to start small, and increase by a reasonable amount over time, typically around a 10% increase, over a weeks time. Starting with 3 rides per week, then increasing that to meet time constraints. With one long ride and two shorter ones, one of the shorter rides is the day after the longer ride, and the other is set so that there is a two day gap on either side. The idea is to have the long ride on the weekend when there is more time available. The shorter rides can be different lengths as well, in this case the mid-week ride would be the shortest.

The plan thus far is to start this past week at 25km, then add 10% each week, I should have moved to outdoor rides by the end of April, and head back indoors around the Middle of October, when I cut back to winter distances. The idea being that next year I don't have a cold start, because I don't need to stop for an extended period. It also means the following spring it will take very little to get back into summer riding condition.

This weeks Photograph is from my backyard, in January, we had a lot of snow by this point, and the barbecue is usually a summer item, all covered in snow it looks kind of sad.

This weeks bike distances:

Current Week distance: 26 km
Current Week goals: 25km - goal met
Year to date total: 36 km
Previous Year Distance: 0 km
February Total: 36km.

Indoor cycling.

2009-02-01T06:00:00.003-05:00

When you live in a climate like this one, bicycling is very difficult, snow tends to block the outer edges of streets and bike lanes, and when it's below freezing, the chance of frost bite is very very real. The answer is to either take the winter off, which is fine if your one of those skinny people who can eat an entire cow and not gain a gram. For those of us who are active riding in summer, but not in winter, you tend to gain a kilo, or two or ten. When you get a summer like last year where it rained every day, but one a fortnight, riding may not happen much then either.

The answer is one of three devices, the exercise bicycle, the trainer or rollers.

Exercise bicycles have a different type of handlebar and saddle, often of poor quality, and may not be easily adjusted to the same configuration as your real bicycle(s).

The trainer is a stand that raises the rear wheel of a real bicycle, then runs along the tire or rim to add resistance. The resistance is either air, fluid or magnetic, to better approximate real riding, if you want to go uphill, increase the resistance, for emulating even ground reduce the resistance. Tire based models can wear out a tire fairly quickly, For bicycles that usually use knobby tires, a rim based model can work better, although they may not work with disc brake rims, and can wear a rim as well.

Rollers consist of two rollers for the rear wheel and an attached roller for the front wheel, as you pedal both wheels turn, you need to be smooth on your pedalling and really concentrate, it's easy to slide off rollers and get injured in the crash.

All three devices have a problem though, they can be very boring, there is no scenery going by, there are solutions, you can set up in front of the TV or listen to music as you ride along, for TV viewers with DVD players there is a series of videos where you "ride" along with a coach, who helps you train. I have not tried this, so I can't comment on how good or bad the videos are, some bike shops will have them though and you can order online from a company called Spinervals in the US. There may be other companies doing a similar thing, if there are others you know about feel free to comment here, include a web link though.

So this week, we got a trainer, and I did some short sessions on it, I need to move the bike computer to my wifes bike, which is on the trainer. to track things better, for this week, I estimated the values, based on time, but I would like to fix this later today. I will probably get another bike computer in the spring to make things easier. May need to get an extension wire though, so that the computer can be properly mounted as the sensor will need to be on the rear wheel.

I am tired of snow and cold and miserable weather, so this weeks photo is from last summer, originally shot on digital, converted to B&W and palladium toned. Palladium is a metal, and in wet process photography a toner made from Palladium is used to give a similar colouring. The technique is similar to Sepia toning, while Palladium gives a brownish tone to a photograph, the metal itself is a silvery whitish colour.

The bike distance log returns this week, all numbers are estimates and on the trainer though:

This weeks bike distances:

Current week distance 10 km
Year to date total: 10 km
Previous Year Distance: 0 km
January Total: 10km.

Some ramblings

2009-01-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are again, it's a deep freeze and not fit for man or beast outside. However the freeze in parliament is about to thaw. Whether the children of the different parties have taken the last 6 weeks to learn to play nicely together after a scolding from mom (the Governour General) we shall see after the budget vote.

The government has proposed 2 years of deficit spending, where the government spends more then it takes in, while deficits are not a good thing, there are times when they are needed. The ideal is that when the economy is doing well, the government builds up reserves. When the economy is doing poorly then the government can spend those reserves to help cushion the blow. The problem is that in the 1970's governments started running deficits when times were good, and even bigger deficits when times were bad, this meant that there were no reserves, and now when governments need those reserves they don't have them. Canada has managed after 10 years of surpluses managed to pay back nearly a third.

The United States never did this, and now with roughly 10 times the population has nearly 30 times the national debt. President Obama cant deal with the problem, with the economy doing as poorly as it is. How this will play out is anyones guess. The United States needs to spend some serious money on building and rebuilding the infrastructure at home, the only place to get it is to end the "oil war" in Iraq, and the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, it's one they can't win anyway.

You may notice over the next few months that I am using new catalogue numbers for photos, the older numbers will be replaced by new ones, for example R0120009 is replaced with A3800041, the A means digital Archive, 38 being the year offset from 1970 (I started in 1977) and 00041 being the image number. Film images also get a new letter B,C or T, the same year code, a 3 digit roll number and a 2 digit frame number. This will mean the same system used for all images, but will take me 3 to 6 months to implement fully.

This weeks photo is probably the most manipulated I have ever done, The original image was taken of The University of Toronto's Convocation Hall Organ, this is mounted high up, so the original had the pillars on either side leaning in, I was not directly centred under it, so it was leaning to one side, It is a digital image, so using The Gimps perspective control I straightened out the image, by stretching the top out, after fixing the colour I applied the B&W filter, added a double border, and the copyright notice, then resized it for use here. This can be done with film images in the darkroom as well, by tilting the easel, although is easiest with large format view cameras, where the perspective can be corrected in the camera,

Until next week.....

Bigger is sometimes better

2009-01-18T06:00:00.001-05:00

In photography, there are two ways to increase resolution, with film the resolution is pretty much fixed, so the way to increase it, is a larger piece of film, this is why even though 35mm is fairly common they still make medium and large format cameras, as the larger piece of film, allows a larger print to be made.

A 35mm negative is 24x36mm in size, for comparison.

A medium format camera is typically measured in cm although I have converted to mm here for comparison. Nearly all these days use 120 size roll film, there have been other sizes over the years, but those have been abandoned over time.

Large format cameras are measured in inches, and consist of the 2¼x3¼ (57mm x 82mm), 4x5 (114mm x 127mm), the 5x7 (127 x 178mm), the 8x10 (203mm x 254mm) the 11x14 ( 280mm x 356mm) the 12x20 (304mmx508mm) and the 16x20 (406x508), Currently the 4x5 and 8x10 are about the only ones still made, although film is available for the other sizes. There were larger cameras at one time, but you can't get film for them.

The larger the negative the less you need to magnify it to get your print, and that often means a sharper print with less visible grain.

With digital to increase the resolution you need more pixels, this is accomplished 2 ways, you either make the sensor larger, or the photo-sites (a photo-site essentially is 1 pixel) smaller.
A larger sensor means a larger camera, and also means that the sensor is much more expensive, Due to the way they are manufactured a sensor that is twice as big will cost 4 times as much to manufacture. For the most part, they have been able to make smaller and smaller photo-sites, but they will eventually hit the limits of optics, and need to move to larger sensors to keep the megapixel race going. As you increase the sensor size, you also need to make other components in the camera larger, or move to a different camera design all together. This also makes things more expensive in a smaller market.

As we are back into snowy weather, a reminder from last winter, is this weeks photo of the week.

A lack of colour

2009-01-11T06:00:00.000-05:00

Most people when they take photographs or images (I'll use the term picture to refer to both, because I am a lazy typist), like to think of those pictures as having lots of glorious rich colour. However, there are a group of photographic artists, who still like to work without colour, they work in black and white.

Black and white pictures work with the quality of light, rather then the colour of light, and that means that the techniques used are different. Good black and white pictures often make lousy colour pictures, and good colour pictures often make lousy black and white ones. This is why the concept of colourized black and white motion pictures didn't last long, because the director of photography used techniques that made good black and white pictures, but lousy colour ones, so the results of colourization made them look cartoon like.

I prefer to make black and white pictures, even when shot on colour, because I like to work with the quality or texture of the light, which is easier when colour doesn't get in the way. Shadows and light angles are also much more interesting. The tonality is also much more important, tonality is a description of how the media graduates from black to white, the more different shades of grey, the better the image can be accurately reproduced, hence the better the tone.

One thing most people do not realise with black and white is that although it doesn't reproduce colour it still has a colour response, and each film is a little different. If you look at 20 different films they will each have different colour response, in that if we take an item that is red, it will have a very slightly different shade of grey, some of the differences are so slight that you need expensive scientific instruments to detect it, but it is there.

This is the issue with digital, digital has a very flat colour response, it sees all colours exactly the same, where as black and white films have bumps and humps in the colour response, and the look is why some people prefer one film over another. You can emulate the colour response of black and white film with digital using the colour mixer option in software, but it's never quite right, as the granularity of settings isn't fine enough.

One of the great things about B&W film is that it lets you get away with a lot, black and white film has the most latitude and nearly any problem save poor focusing can be fixed in the darkroom.

For these reasons, this year I will be shooting more black and white film again, and using my digital camera for less artistic stuff.

This weeks photo is actually a digital B&W conversion, I don't plan on doing a lot more of these, but we shall see. It will take a while to get the darkroom going again.....

Some Changes here

2009-01-04T06:00:00.001-05:00

It's a new year, and I am making a few changes for this year. For one the weekly update is moving from 11:45PM Saturday to 6:00AM Sunday, it actually gets updated around the same time, but this takes better advantage of the advanced posting feature, and if I am past 11:45 before I get it wrapped up, then it's not late getting posted.

I am debating breaking the post into separate pieces, for example posting the commentary on Saturday as is now, and the Photo of the week separately, but by changing the time, I get a better opportunity to post without being late, so I don't really need to do it that way, and will leave it as is for now.

I have a new, well new to me anyway 80-200mm lens for the Canon, and plan on giving it a good test for imaging and sharpness, it's not in the same class as the Hexanons for the film cameras, but I can't afford 'L' series glass at this point. Maybe if I won the lotto, but that doesn't seem like it will happen any time soon.

Speaking of the film cameras, I plan to return to film for my B&W work this year, getting a good B&W digital image is a lot of work, you spend a lot of time emulating film in that case, and if your emulating film, you might as well shoot film. I would like to return to making B&W prints as well, just need to figure out how, in a limited space. I think some plywood supports might help, but then I need to find a place to store them and such.

This weeks photo of the week is a bit of a cheat, it was actually taken on colour film, then digitally processed to B&W. The day of shooting was a balmy -18℃ and the only camera that wasn't frozen up was the old TC, the batteries failed so everything was shot using the sunny 16 rules. I am not entirely happy with the digital emulation of B&W film, in that I think a lot of the tonality is lost, although for posting here, everything is going to be digital anyway, whether the original is film or not.

A new year

2008-12-27T23:45:00.001-05:00

Well, the Christmas tunes are off the radio, boxing day sales are in full swing, people are wondering where they put the box for the decorations. Christmas is over and done, and another year is too. I always like to look at the year in review, and do some looking forward.

2008 was a soggy year, here in Southern Ontario we set a record for the wettest year, since they started keeping records. We suffered through the long drawn out, media heavy process of an American election, and had one here too. My much better half graduated with a Master of Divinity degree, and got a part-time job, but the full time church pastor position she is looking for, was elusive.

For cycling, I posted 1271km in 70.22 hours for an average speed of 18.1km/h considerably less then the goal, which was 2500km, didn't get much further then half way, and considerably less then the 2057km in 2007. For 2009 the goal to be set will again be 2500km, and I want to get the average speed over 20km/h. We shall see....

For photography, I wanted to take more photos, especially more from the bike, and failed there too, although hope to get things back on track, in 2009.

I have added to the lens collection, an 80-200mm lens for the Digital Rebel, I picked it up today, and it rained all day, so no chance to test it out. Will see if I can get some test shots done this coming week though.

This weeks photo was shot on the shore of Lake Ontario, these funny looking rocks are actually covered in a thick layer of ice, it was originally shot with the digital camera, then converted to B&W to simulate B&W film. This is probably not a technique I will continue doing though, as I would rather shoot B&W with B&W film. Something I plan to return to, in 2009.

Well this is our last post for 2008, I hope you had a very merry Christmas, and pray that you will have a blessed 2009.

I hate Christmas

2008-12-20T23:45:00.000-05:00

Actually I don't hate Christmas, I hate what Christmas has become, a celebration of gifts and presents, of people spending money they don't have, on essentially so much, crap! We need to
really look at Christmas from the true meaning, and I think a Greek doctor named Luke, described it best, in a letter to Theophilus:

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn (Luke 2:1-7, NKJV).

It's typical of the way God does things, we have an ordinary guy, Joe, a Carpenter, by trade, and Mary, an ordinary young woman, probably no older then 14, who was engaged to Joe, and God selected them, as the early parents for one of the greatest men who ever walked on this earth, Jesus the Christ, the son of God. Who ministered for only 3 years, in a geographic area that you could drive the circumference of in about 4 hours, Who then was executed not for crimes, not for doing bad things, but for the sins of man kind.

If you do not know about the real story of Christmas, then I suggest you visit a local Church on Christmas eve, see and hear the real story of Christmas for yourself. If your in Toronto, York Minster Park Baptist Church at 1585 Yonge Street has their second annual Christmas eve play at 5:30PM, in front of the Church, it's one block north of St Clair Subway Station. You don't even need to go inside!

The picture this week, as a stained glass Window at York Minster Park Baptist Church.

Scanning Images

2008-12-13T23:45:00.001-05:00

This week I will explain, how I go about this, first I get my stuff together. I clean the scanner bed and light window. Having these clean makes the process much easier. Then using darkroom gloves, which are lint free, I put the negative in the carrier, and put that in the scanner.

I then scan the 4 images per strip. Each one is rough edited, in the comment section I put when it was taken(if known) which camera was used, what type of film and speed, the original negative number, and the new scan number. Negative numbers are multi-part numbers consisting of a 2 digit year, 2 digit sequential roll number, and 2 digit frame number. Yes, year numbers after 2000 are lower then year numbers before, but that is okay, I keep them in separate negative books. I sincerely doubt I will be around and taking photographs in 2077 when the numbers get to the point they would repeat, as I will be 116 years old..

One of the key points though, is I do not do a lot of editing, unless I plan on doing something with the image. Most will simply be catalogued, put on CD and not examined again. Most of the pictures of the week are photos taken from the collection, edited further and then posted online.

The photo of the week This photo was taken the summer of 1977, it was my violin, in November of that year I inherited my dad's violin, and years later sold this one, to someone who wanted to learn to play. I still have my dad's even though I quit playing regularly when I went to college. Having broken my left arm a year ago, and suffering some nerve damage, I don't think I can play anymore. The great debate is to sell the violin, which has some sentimental value, or keep it?

Politics, I thought we were done...

2008-12-06T23:45:00.000-05:00

Well, I thought the political situation had been resolved.

This week, in Canada we had an interesting situation. Not everyone knows what this means, especially those outside Canada, as I have an international auduience here, I will explain what happened and is happening.

In Canada, we have several political parties, 2 large ones, 2 not so large, and a bunch of tiny ones. In the last election, both large ones and both not so large elected some members to the house, the largest party, The Conservative Party, was asked to form a minority government, meaning they have less then half the seats.

In Canada some bills are considered confidence votes, finance bills, the speech from the throne, etc. If the governing party loses a vote on a confidence bill, it means that there is no confidence in that Parliament. This then means that one of two things happens, either the Prime Minister goes to the Governor General to dissolve Parliament forcing an election, or if two or more other parties can form a coalition, they can ask the Governor General to allow them to form a government instead.

The Governor General is the representative of Her Majesty the Queen, and actually has the second most powerful job in the land, the most powerful being that of the Queen.

The opposition parties have formed a coalition, intent on ousting the governing party, and spending billions of dollars the government doesn't have to bolster an economy that is in a recession, but a fairly minor one, when compared to the situation in the US. The confidence vote was scheduled for Monday.

The Prime Minister went to the Governor General to effectively shut down Parliament until January, delaying the vote, this process called prorogation, while an unusual step, really just extends the Christmas break for the house, which usually shuts down from mid December to Mid January anyway. Hopefully the Governor General will ask all the party leaders to play nice in the sandbox together and end the crisis without needing coalitions or an election. In my opinion the GG should call for an election if this can not be resolved and let the people decide.

On a lighter note, I continued the scanning process this week, while black and white negatives, for the most part turn out wonderfully, just like if they were processed yesterday, the colour negatives did not fair so well. Colour images are formed differently, the development process forms dyes to provide colour, the silver is the converted back during bleaching to silver halides, just like in new film, and then removed during the fixing step, leaving just the colour dyes, these dyes can fade with time. Strangely enough the yellow dye fades the fastest, then magenta and finally cyan. This means that there is a colour shift as negatives age actually a shift toward a yellowy orange in prints made from old negatives. A quick look and slides that I have taken seem to have faired much better even though many are almost as old.

As I continue the process, I will keep updating things here, and posting some of the results.

Picture of the Week, and old one but not from the scanning project....

All nostalgic....

2008-11-29T23:45:00.000-05:00

This week I started through the book, the 5cm thick book, has all of me negatives from the 1970's and I have kept all that film, and have begun scanning those images, so that I have them in the catalogue. I expect that doing 3 or 4 rolls a week, I should be up to about 1980 by spring....

Some of these images are of people long gone, some I lost track of, others have died, some are of events I was at, some were at home, some make me wonder why a young man was interested in the subject at all. I've discovered that while the B&W images have aged well, the colour ones didn't fair so well, some are completely faded to nothing,

I'll post photos from this collection occasionally, including this weeks photo of the week.

The man in the photo was my father who pasted away November 4, 1977, doing what he loved to do most, fiddle with his fiddle. Not really a fiddler though, he played in the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra up until suffering a stroke earlier that fall. Yes he has been gone for over 30 years now, and looking at this photo, brings a tear to my eye still.

The Great Film Versus Digital debate

2008-11-22T23:45:00.000-05:00

Last couple of weeks ago, we started talking about the one problem with digital cameras and that is dust on the images, it accumulates over time and needs to be edited out, or the sensor needs to be cleaned, something that should take place once in a while. Mine got cleaned this week, and it looks much better.

Last week I talked about returning, at least partially to film shooting, this week I am going to move further into this.

There are many photographers whom, you will have to pry their final roll of film from their cold, dead fingers. There are also people who would rather die then trade their digital camera for a film one again. I think both groups are to a large extent wrong. When one has no preconceived notions about which is better, they start to think as digital being similar to another film format. One that gets processed on the computer, rather then in a dark room. There are times when you want to experiment, to make images where you can't wait for results or you must know that your image is perfect. These kinds of images are where digital excels. It's also good for the casual shooter who is perfectly happy to drop off their reusable memory card at a lab for printing, or copying images to a website to print the images. This is actually often cheaper then producing the images on an ink jet printer where ink costs can be quite high. For the highest image quality though, an analogue print from a negative can not be beat, especially if it's a larger negative. If you want images that will be around 100 years hence, you also can't beat black and white film, processed to archival standards, which is easy to do at home. These images will be readable long after the current digital media is no longer readable. There are people who say certain digital media on gold discs will last 300 years without degrading. The problem though is that digital technology is always changing, there is no guarantee that in 300 years there will still be software that can read a JPEG file or current data structures. Finding a method of reading a floppy disc made on a Commodore Pet in 1980 for example is very difficult only 28 years later, in 300 years, it may be totally impossible to read any of today's formats. Unless someone constantly updates the media over the next 300 years, and that may be difficult, lots of times old photos are found in boxes, in some cases the subject and photographer are both long forgotten.

There is a solution though, if you take a digital image, then ink print it on transparency film, and contact print that on photographic film you can get a film negative of a digital image, and that could well last as long as a direct film image. You can also go the other way, take a film image, scan it into a digital format, and use that as a digital image. Which is a process I have done. I will admit I have not tried getting a film image from digital.

This weeks photo is having some fun, with borders, the first image is a negative, it appears as a black and white negative, even though the original is in colour. The holes on either eide, denote this as being a 35mm format negative, a size that is common also in motion picture film, although quite often motion picture film is very different in composition. The chemical composition is different, and the processing is different.

The second image is the same one, printed as a photo has a white and black border around it, this allows a better delineating between the image and border, this is often done in printed photographs the border being covered by the arms that hold the paper in the enlarger during exposure.

retro-grouch week.

2008-11-15T23:45:00.001-05:00

As many of you know, I do a lot of digital photography, I also do some using film. While digital has improved considerably over the last few years, it's not always the way to go. Which is why I keep my film cameras, while a lot of people have sold off the equipment, and gone completely digital.

I'm going to give you some of the reasons to keep shooting film, at least some times. I consider digital another film format, as most techniques used in film, also apply to digital, now of course my digital camera can turn results around faster, gets more shots per "roll", and I don't need to buy film and processing, however it's not perfect.

Digital has a very narrow latitude, if the exposure is perfect and the required sensitivity is reasonable, typically it works very well. It's when you get outside of the normal parameters, it starts to fall on it's face. Digital's response is completely linear, the best digital processor has a 14 bit response meaning each colour has 16,384 possible values. Film has all kinds of possible intermediate values, giving film images, especially black and white ones much finer tonal response, then even the best digital cameras.

Another advantage for film is that your not fixed in place by technology, my digital camera is never going to be better at response then it is right now, the sensor is fixed in place, 10 years from now, it will be no better then it is today. My film cameras are 30 years old, yet I can get wonderful new films that are coming out, and take advantage of 30 years of improvement in film technology like being able to remove the sensor and processor from the digital camera and putting better and newer ones in.

Some if the film improvements in the last few years are C41 process black and white films, some with and some without the familiar orange mask used in colour films, thus allowing the film to be processed and printed by the standard photo lab. Although most professional labs can still do standard B&W processing, and it's very easy to do with a few pieces of equipment and readily available chemistries.

Film resolutions can be improved several ways, one is by using a finer grained film, processed for finest grain (especially in B&W), Another is with a bigger camera, if you like the results with a 35mm camera, try a 6x4.5cm with a much larger negative, results can knock your socks off. Nice thing is, medium format equipment that a few years ago cost thousands of dollars is now quite reasonably priced.

If you have an older film camera lying around, dig it out, load it up, and see what it can still do....

This weeks photo is a film image, and is one of my favourites. The image shows the power of using both film and digital, in that it was originally done on colour film and later converted to black and white on the computer.

The problem with digital SLR cameras.

2008-11-08T23:45:00.000-05:00

This week we deal with a frustrating problem with DSLR or digital single lens reflex cameras. The great advantage with these cameras is that you can remove the lens and install different ones, Few SLR camera users, that have been using one for a while don't have at least a couple of lenses. Some film photographers in years gone by had a plethora of lenses, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm 50mm, 85mm, 135mm, 200mm are probably the most common. At least one of those probably had macro capability. The quality of zoom lenses is much better then it used to be, so often you can replace aLL those lenses with a couple of zooms. Of course if your trying to get photos of skittish wildlife, or a starlet in a compromising position, you can have lenses much longer. Konica in the 1970's and 1980's had a 2000mm catadioptric lens in their catalogue, although from what I have been able to determine only 2 were ever built. One was at the companies headquarters in Japan, the other was at their US distributor. When you figure you could probably buy a very nice new car for the price at the time, and it weighed an outstanding 17.7kg, it's not surprising that people didn't rush in droves to snap them up.

The problem when you remove the lens, is that dust can enter the camera, and dust always goes where it is least wanted, in the case of a DSLR it's the sensor. This first photo is straight from the camera, what marketers like to call an unretouched photo. If you look at the sky you will see all kinds of dark spots, these spots are dust on the cameras sensor.

I loaded the photo into The GIMP image editing program, and by carefully copying small areas of the image which did not contain dust, was able to block out most of it. There is probably still a few small spots, you can drive yourself insane trying to eliminate every last one of them, This is a form of retouching, they used to do this with prints in the film days, now you work with the image digitally before printing. This process is pretty much inevitable. If there get to be too many spots, you can try cleaning the sensor, there are a variety of sensor cleaning products around, or send the camera to a repair centre to have them clean the sensor. Probably a good idea to have them give the whole camera a good cleaning and check over. This is something that probably needs doing every 4-5 years. Of course if your always swapping lenses in dusty areas, then it may be need cleaning more often.

They say always pointing the camera down when changing lenses, with the power turned off, helps.

I am cheating this week, the photo I am posting here as our example is the photo of the week.

The Green Car

2008-11-01T23:45:00.000-04:00

I've heard a lot about electric cars lately, Ontario Power Generation is really pushing it, and new battery technologies like Lithium-Ion make it nearly reasonable, at least for shorter trips.

There are really 3 types of electric car, ones that are purely electric, meaning that you plug it in, and that charges a set of batteries. While technically possible, even 100 years ago, the problem was that the only real battery option was the lead acid battery, these batteries though are very heavy for the amount of usable power stored in them, although they can provide high drain over short periods of time, they can't be completely discharged. Modern battery technologies like Lithium-Ion and Molten Salt may solve many of the battery issues. These promise to be the greenest, although it depends on where your power comes from, power from a dirty coal plant, can net worse pollution then the conventional gasoline or diesel engine.

The second kind of electric car, is known as a hybrid, a conventional gasoline engine powers a generator which charges a smaller battery, which powers an electric motor that powers the car. These come in two types, one uses only the electric motors, the other allows the gasoline engine to directly power the car under certain conditions. While often they can use smaller engines, they still pollute.

The third kind of electric car is the hydrogen fuel cell, although hydrogen is an energy store, rather then an energy producer, although hydrogen is one of the most abundant materials on earth, most of it is bound up with other things. Extraction from water uses a lot of energy, extraction from some other sources like hydrocarbons (oil or coal) results in pollution, and can use large amounts of energy as well.

Even a car that uses only solar, water or wind power generated electricity isn't completely green, because there are other issues, First is that cars have an insatiable appetite for land. If you want to see that in action, visit the local mall, the building takes up a small portion of the lot, the rest is parking, look at the big wide roads needed to accommodate cars. Even at home there is the big driveway and garage needed to accommodate a car or two. In the city of Toronto something like 20% of the land is public roads, the amount of private land dedicated to the car, must be nearly the same amount. All this land dedicated to cars means less land for people and other creatures to use.

Speaking of creatures, the number of animals killed in collisions with cars is considerable, just a week ago, a small cat I had seen roaming the neighbourhood, was killed crossing a nearby street. I don't think that particular cat was more then six months old, so more of a kitten really, it crossed it's last street. Unfortunately it was beyond help by the time I saw it, it will take a long time to get that image out of my head.

In reality, I think that the days of the automobile are limited, the amount of energy available from renewable sources is quite limited, the days of cheap oil are running out, we have at the outside 50 years left. We have 300 years worth of coal left, at current usage rates, maybe 100 years of nuclear, increasing the use of these fuels to power electric cars will simply use up the supply that much faster.

Amazingly for all the infrastructure dedicated to it, the car only became popular 100 years ago, when Henry Ford introduced his model T in 1908. I expect sometime in the next 50 years, people will begin to take that structure apart.

I promised last week to post the Picture of the week late, and never got around to it, so this week you get two. The first one is from this year's flower garden, which is now all dead and brown, except a couple of brave roses that haven't succumbed to the frost yet.
The second photo is from a trip several years ago, and this committee of ducks, looks like all the new members of Parliment trying to figure out how they fit in.

This weeks bike distances:

Current week distance 0 km
Year to date total: 1 266 km
Previous Year Distance: 2 009 km
October Total: 18km.

Decisions decisions....

2008-10-25T23:45:00.000-04:00

In 2 months it will be Christmas, and one must decide what to do with Christmas Cash. This year I need to decide, bike updates or camera updates.

The bike does need a new chain and rear cassette, but those can wait until spring.

The camera does need another lens, something in the medium to long telephoto range, thinking of a 70-200mm or 70-300mm zoom, I also need to clean the sensor, there are simple ways that are not very intrusive, and I will try that first. If that does not work, I may need to send it to Canon for a professional cleaning.

I have a photo for this week, but need to do some work on it, and will post it Sunday....

No bike distance this week. I'll post a month summary next week.

The Election is over, finally

2008-10-18T23:45:00.000-04:00

This is my final election report, it's one of the huge advantages of the Canadian electoral process, from beginning to end it's less then a month and a half. In this case it was 37 days, amd the result was another minority government.

For those reading from the US and other places which don't have them, a minority government is when more then 2 parties are involved, but no party has more then half the seats, so the largest party is asked to form the government. This makes things interesting, in that parties need to work together to keep the government running. Of course in some cases on important votes the governing party fails to get enough support, this is considered as the government failing, and the head of Parliament, called the Prime Minister, asks the Governor General (the queens representative, when the queen is outside the country) to dissolve parliament and the process begins again. Minority governments are often short lived.

Often the process is easier because one or more parties will be reviewing their leaders, and do not want to enter an election without a new leader, it can take a year to get a new leader installed, and comfortable enough to want an election. I expect this 40th Parliament to last between one and three years.

Picture of the week This is a flower from our garden, from a few years ago, shot on film in B&W then scanned into the computer.

This weeks bike distances:

Current week distance 0 km
Year to date total: 1 266 km
Previous Year Distance: 2 009 km
October Total: 18km.

Election Tuesday

2008-10-12T09:11:00.002-04:00

Tuesday is election day in Canada, so this is my final chance to say something on it.

It is your duty as a Canadian citizen to go and vote, so if you have not picked your candidate, then visit the party web sites, a list of parties and their contact information is available from
Elections Canada

I ask all undecided voters, to review the party platforms, and pick a candidate, and get out and vote. Remember votes for smaller parties are not wasted votes, as it tells the elected that the issues smaller parties raise, are important to Canadians.

I hear folks all the time, saying what's wrong with the government, as if there is nothing people can do about it, I always tell them, to go fix it. They always ask how, pick a party that thinks like you do, find out who their candidate is and work your butt off to get them elected. If the party doesn't have a candidate in your area, then consider running yourself. Too late for that this election, but something to keep in mind for the next one.

If you do not exercise your right to vote, you give up your right to complain about those who are elected.

This weeks photo is from last years trip to Tommy Thompson Park on the Leslie Street Spit, a trip I planned to repeat all summer this year, but have not had the chance to go, well maybe next year, although one never knows what a new year will bring, so maybe another adventure all together.

This weeks bike distances:

Current week distance 18 km
Year to date total: 1 266 km
Previous Year Distance: 2 009 km
October Total: 18km.

Crappy weather and a bad back

2008-10-04T23:45:00.000-04:00

Well, the week started off with rain, and my poor back was complaining away, in fact I went to see my Chiropractor on Monday, then didn't go to work on Tuesday, the weather got better on Friday, but my back is still offering complaint, although a couple of days off work will certainly help. We are starting to lose the weather as far as cycling is concerned, it's now dark much earlier, and it's getting colder, so I suspect the remaining season is measured in weeks rather then months. October typically means the end of the season, which is followed by a Hiatus from cycling, this past week is the first 0 km week since almost two weeks of thunderstorms in late July, although there may be some riding next week. I am going to try riding in the late morning, to see if that will let me ride more days then current. I also want to get a trainer, which is a stand that will hold the back of the bike off the floor, they have a roller that runs against the tire so as to offer resistance. although it can be terribly boring to ride that way.

This weeks photo is from last winter, were hoping that this winter isn't as snowy as last winter. One thing, I usually think that the photography season also ends when bicycle season does, but this isn't the case, I have many photos that were taken outside, in snowy weather, although I usually don't venture far to take winter photos. certainly not as far as I would to take summer photos.

This weeks bike distances:

Current week distance 0 km
Year to date total: 1 249 km
Previous Year Distance: 1 867 km
September Total: 171 km
October Total: 0km.