Just a quick on before the day is done. I've been playing with some EFL and Edje programming, and am working on a simple media player type application. No idea if it'll finish, but perhaps it'll motivate me sufficiently to put an actual page under the Sandbox portion of this site. Also, I was looking at the news section of the previously linked Quel Solaar, and found that "the team" (a guy named Eskil) had released a trailer for the forthcoming game Love, which looks interesting. Watching it gave me a vibe somewhat between Myst and Magic Carpet, which both rank quite highly on my list. I'm not holding my breath for this one though, since it's a one man show putting it together, and it might be a while before anything playable comes out. Anyway, it's good to hear of progress, and the trailer is definately worth the 00:02:48.

Nearly a month since posting, and not for lack of things to say...
I've been to, and returned from, MS PDC 2008 in Los Angeles. It was a very busy time, and I didn't get to see nearly as much of the city as I had hoped to. In fact when we went to the Hollywood strip on arrival day I hadn't even brought my camera, assuming that we would be doing a little more sightseeing, but ended up missing the only shot we were to get at it. Anyway, the second non-conference outing was to Universal Studios, which Microsoft had rented out for the evening of our second day there. It was done up in full halloween regalia, and was a lot of fun, but mostly because the lines were short and everything was free. I can't believe people actually pay for an ultimately worse experience there. If I don't go back I won't be a bit sorry. The last full day we were all suffering from some information overload, and most of the sessions were sounding like rehashes of the same material, so we took off early and headed down to Santa Monica for the afternoon and evening. We ended up catching a bus down there, since there doesn't appear to be a way to take the subway from downtown, and it was about an hour long ride which offered a good chance to see a large portion of the city. I'm pretty glad we took the bus, since cabbing everywhere can make for a pretty canned experience. We had a look at the pier in Santa Monica, and walked the length of the mostly deserted beach (and into the Venice Beach strip) until after dark. Along the way I saw my second awesome vintage BMW motorcycle, which further inspires me to pick up something similar. Every time I see one of those it blows my mind. We then took a quick cab ride back to the 3rd Steet Promenade, which is much like what Calgary's Stephen Avenue is supposed to be, where we had a nice dinner, compements of the company, and took our $50 cab ride back to the hotel. I'd like to see more of LA, especially the beach part of it. There is a more relaxed attitude there that I don't feel I really got to see.

As I entered in my last post, it was supposed to be my last week on that job. I got back from LA and had a week's extension to try and get some vendor related issues worked out, but ended up staying for two full weeks waiting for them to put some eyes on the problem. Finally, on the friday of the last week they finally took 15 minutes and fixed the issues with their database and we could confirm that my code was working. I'm glad it got to end on a somewhat high note, and am relieved to have been able to successfully test my end of the project. Now I'm at Ideaca waiting for my next job, but with any luck I'll be waiting until the new year, which should give me lots of time to attend to my numerous other neglected projects.

Well I'm down to my last week here, and despite a couple of API challenges and vendor stonewalling, I may actually finish on time. As with all projects it would be nice to have another week or so clean things up a bit more, but my time is better spent on having the business test the current code and make sure that it's functioning as well for them as it has been for me. It's been very frustrating this past week to see my near-perfect solution give way to the inconsistencies of a poor, poor API, but what're you gonna do...

In other news, Aviary has come out of it's shell, so to speak, with the beta version going public. I've been keeping a loose eye on it since I first heard of the project a while ago. It's an interesting push in the cloud computing direction for media creation and manipulation. It's basically a bunch of in-the-browser tools for image editing, with plans for many more as part of the suite. The cloud computing idea was recently described to me as a resurrection, or extension, of the late 1980's which had "experts" predicting a takeover of the client-server model, and all of us using thin clients by now. That didn't exactly pan out, though it was popular for a while. Anyway, I did notice some performance issues last night in my trial run of creating an image, but that could be a problem on my end too, and I wouldn't claim that a single session was anything like conclusive.

In yet other news, A Librophiliacs Love Letter is amazing. I quite regularly visit architecture and design blogs, and every time I see a library in someone's home it makes me jealous.

So I've had a bit of idle time here in the last few days as I wait for some vendor feedback, and in the course of frittering away those minutes have made a couple of submissions to iStock's Screen Yrself contest, which is fun, but ultimatly too constraining for me due to the three color restriction. I'm not talented enough to reduce image complexity to that level and keep it looking good. The only consolation I have is that most of the other entrants either have the same trouble, or keep wanting to throw text in their designs, which I would file under "appalling". In addition to the previously mentioned fffound (I like it so much I'll link it twice :) I've been hanging around Strange Maps, which is exactly what it sounds like. Since I love maps - and especially old or otherwise unusual ones - it's a pretty cool way to blow off steam.

In other news, Christina and I have booked our stay at Turtle Inn, Boracay and I've got to say that, despite trying to stay low key about the trip, I'm starting to get pretty excited! We went in for our shots a couple of days ago, and even just talking to the nurse there about the diseases and stuff we might catch kind of got me pumped to get going.

Also, after much searching and seeking, I finally broke down and got a 1/2" allen key to change the oil on my bike, instead of the 13mm key I believed was the proper size. Except it was too large. So I took the bike in to the shop, had the size checked for sure, and it turns out that all this time I've needed the oh-so-common 12mm, NOT the 13mm I had been looking for. ‹sigh›... So that's done. Now my next major task is getting a wedding website put together so that Christina and I can start getting some content ready.

I've been heads down at WestJet these days, working on converting a portion of an ETL app from stored procedures to using Web Services. It has been very busy, but a lot of fun too, and I've learned a lot about C#. In the scant downtime available I've "discovered" fffound, which is promising to be an excellent source of daily inspiration and distraction. Just what I need :)

The folks visited this past weekend, and it was great to see them again, though it hasn't been especially long since our last visit. With all of Dad's side now living in Calgary "dinner at Len's" became something like a mini family reunion. Christina and I got to show them "the venue", and get them generally up to speed on the wedding planning progress. Christina has been working away at it with a not-unexpected gusto, which means that we're fully on schedule. I haven't been a particularly engaged participant, but have no doubt that as we come around to the back nine of the timeline, and things move from a strategic to a tactical focus, I'll have more to do. For now I'm happy to let her play.

No progress on either getting my motorcycle back in active action or getting this website finished up. But I've got plans to do both "real soon now"™

As the day winds down I reflect on my time at this contract, and decide that I'm happy to be out of it. Great company with fantastic people, but this portion of the project feels like a made-to-fail exercise, and I'm happy to roll off at this point. It's been a very interesting, and personally stretching, experience, but I'm ready to get back into proper development. With any luck I'll get some time between engagements to finally do some EFL development. Or finish this website. Or build a wedding website... Yikes.

We're back. I never did get to change that oil, but it turns out that it was not oil that caused me trouble. I'll tell it backwards, cuz I'm tricky like that.

I pulled into the stall at my building and sighed in relief as I killed the engine. Seeing the construction at the very last intersection before turning in to my lot had made my heart skip a beat. Very much like the beat it had skipped just a couple of blocks prior, when I'd had to run a red light, which itself had turned on me as I screamed toward the fading yellow as fast as first gear could push. Not all reds were run though, as the second light into town was where I found that I was no longer able to disengage the engine. Not able to shift into neutral, and with the clutch not quite holding the engine back, I rode both clutch and brake in a careful, creeping balance as I waited for the light to change. On the approach to this light I could sense that the end was near. An inevitability betrayed by the lack of tension in the clutch lever, which I had so feared to feel, and an unmistakable stickiness while shifting. Pulling away from the first light in Calgary, which we had caught just changing green, and I hadn't had to stop complete for, I started to breath, as safe arrival became, again, a hope. Pulling away from the scene I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn't make it back after all. Each of the few shifts required to get through the bottleneck made my hairs raise and breath a little shallower, as the sponginess of the clutch, and stickiness of the gears could only mean that I was very near to finding out first hand what a leaking hydraulic clutch yields. The firefighters on scene were blocking off one of the lanes of traffic, and the resultant merge was the cause of the delay. Passing Calaway Park, and only another twenty minutes from home, traffic suddenly slowed. We were on the doorstep of Calgary, and I finally began to relax.

Anyway, the rest of the ride was fantastic. We had beautiful weather on the last day, as well as from Vancouver to Kelowna on Friday, and got frozen and soaked on Wednesday and Thurday. Nice variety :). It was really great to visit the folks, and I'm happy to call the whole trip a success. I'll maybe post later when there are some pictures online and I feel like saying more.

This is a particularly short week. Today is Tuesday, but really Friday, since it's the last working day before Christina and I, along with a small group, say good-bye to dry, dirty Calgary, and head west. We're going to see Jack Johnson in Vancouver, which would be cool enough on its own, but Christina an dI are going to try and ride out to the event, which is cooler yet! The weather looks a little uncooperative, so we might end up just driving, but I would be quite dissapointed if we didn't get the chance to ride, as this will be Christina's longest ride so far, and the first multi-day trip we'll have taken together on the bikes.

Preparing for the trip has been a little frustrating for me, as I had planned to do oil changes on both of our bikes, and had a couple of annoying roadblocks to such a simple job. My motorcycle maintenance has been done chiefly with Steve in his garage, which has historically meant that I just show up and use his tools and stuff. Doing a job like this on my own was a little more than my tiny toolkit could handle, and I had to do a bunch of running around to get the right bits together. Additionally, I seem to have lost my 8mm allen key, which is apparently not a very common article, as none of the places I've been to have carried them (except in kits with a great number of unneccessary sizes). Anyway, I finally got hers done yesterday, and will do mine tonight, by hook or by crook.

After a whirlwind weekend I'm (sort of) back. Since last post I've flown to Toronto and back, picked up a car from the airport last night on arrival, and driven down here to Sparwood for the last kick at UAT, following which I'll be driving back up to Calgary for a long overdue night in my own bed. Christina and I dropped the good news on her family just before flying out with them for the (unrelated) wedding in Toronto, and called my folks from the airport. I'm not in a hurry to send out mass emails or anything, as I'd rather tell people in person, but look for a facebook status update soon, hehe.

After much deliberation, consideration, contemplation, reflection and projection I began to think. Thoughts led me to plans, and plans led me to actions, which have ended in a proposal. A proposal made last night, which she has accepted!

Christina and I are, finally, suddenly, engaged to be married!

I'm not even absolutely sure now how I came across it at first, anymore. It must have been a blog or something. Anyway, I recently found the website of Eskil Steenberg, who is, by himself, making a game called Love. It looks like one of the most interesting ideas in game design I've seen in a long time. A REALLY long time. I very highly recommend checking it out, as well as his blog, which has some truly well written and thoroughly considered material regarding media, games, development, and technology.

Now I don't remember which I saw first, if it was the previously mentioned Love, or the Verse platform on which the game is being built, but his resource on the topic is what got me really interested, especially after seeing the in-game screenshots, which are stunning. Being so impressed, I checked out Verse and saw that it has a number of open source, freely downloadable tools. The platform itself is designed around multiple developers and development tools (mostly oriented around the 3D space of modelling and audio) connecting through a server for collaboration. On the same file. At the same time. Possibly using different tools!? Outrageous! I haven't had a chance to fully explore the toolkit yet, and probably won't do more than make a 3D smiley face, but the modelling tool is crazy enough to pick up on its own merit. The screenshots blew my mind, and though it's not the most intuitive interface, it is certainly the most experimental and interesting, which to me is worth much, much more. I look forward to a little time to explore it more thoroughly.

Well it seems like things are moving and shaking all around the Enlightenment world. In addition to the previously mentioned Planet E there has recently been unveiled Exchange.e.org, which is to be the successor to Get-E, and will provide, in addition to themes, third party applications and modules. At a glance it seems to be a very nice improvement, but also it provides a nice API which allows application integration with the provided online content. Sweet! Also new is the Adventures in Edje blog, written by Toma, which has a great start to some theme-specific tutorials, tips and tricks.

After another stint in Sparwood, this time for running UAT sessions with the user groups, I'm back in town. The trip was brief, only the first couple of days of the week, but somehow it wore me right out. That, and one other happening of significance have kept me very busy in the past couple of weeks, but details will have to wait. All I'll say for now, is "Strange things are afoot" and leave it at that.

Last night after getting home I was catching up on the E17 developer mailing list and found a reference to Planet E, a blog aggregator which takes feeds from the developer team and shows them all in one place. Among numerous posts about food, a few about E17, and a nest of miscellany, there was one post from Benr titled Christianity, which I was surprised and delighted to find associated with a project in my immediate interest. It was a very well written entry that does a great job encapsulating many of my own theological positions, and my own observations about how faith and life mesh with internet culture:
The Bible outlines how God has interacted with man in different ways over time and why they didn't work... "Just give me a sign and I'll believe!", and He did that and it didn't make a difference, "Just give me some easy rules to follow and I'll believe!", and He did that and it didn't make a difference. It all leads up to Jesus and grace.
When Open Source came along it jived for me because it parallels Christianity. Community and working together and evangelizing... these are integral Christian concepts that I immediately got.
Doubt isn't a sin... explore faith and test it.
What?? Who is this guy? If my thoughts were this organized I'd claim that he had stolen them! I especially love the Penny-Arcade reference, since Jesus is one of my favorite characters that they do. It's such a perfectly agnostic representation of Jesus The Son Of God as a normal dude [1, 2, 3, 4]. Anyway, that was super cool to stumble across.

Well my fears about riding through The Pass this past weekend were unfounded. We had absolutely spectacular weather all weekend, and had a fantastic time "camping". I quote because it was a pretty yuppy affair. We had snacks Sunday night, a late breakfast was picked up at a farmers market Saturday morning, lunch was snacks at the beach, and for dinner we hit the dairy bar just up the street for a hamburger. It's funny how much of the effort involved with camping dissapears when food is not an issue. All that's left is to set up the tent, make a fire, and chill out. Good times. We did have to make an early return, as Christina had to work on Monday, but that was fine for me, as I spent the day doing some housekeeping, and finally finishing an entire game of SoaSE. I've been looking around for something new to play and am pretty dissapointed in the selection. I'm on a bit of an RTS kick now, but might have to take the blinders off if nothing good can be found. If I had a comments bit on this site I'd put it out there as a question, but this feature is mid-way down a long list which hasn't been looked at in months.

After last weekend's Kaninaskis camping trip Christina and I made a run to MEC and upgraded/aqcuired some legacy and missing items from our camping equipment inventory. That means we're all set for this weekend's camping trip, which will take us south, between Fernie and Cranbrook. We'll be riding through Crowsnest Pass, which consistently provides "stimulating" weather patterns, so that should be fun.

For the past couple of weeks I've had a Wii and an Xbox 360 at home, which has been quite entertaining. I had kept telling myself that I'd take the next-gen plunge myself, but instead have these guys on loan for a few months. I have been keeping an eye on the game inventory for the new generation of systems, and haven't really found anything very compelling, so it's been good to try them both out first hand. I have to say that the 360 is somewhat dissapointing. It hasn't been on more than a couple of times, and the only game so far tried (Gears of War) left me with an eyebrow raised and my patience expired. The Wii however, is a little more compelling. I'm not such a huge fan of the Wii Sports, but can highly recommend Ghost Squad as an absolutely fantastic interpretation of the classic arcade "on rails" shooter. I won't rave too long about it, but if you have a Wii you probably owe it to yourself to drop the $30 and pick this title up.

Well we're back from Edmonton, and have one more wedding scratched off the list. This is a tremendous relief, since this was the event for which Christina and myself were filling an MC role. It went quite a bit better than I had expected, and was quite a smooth operation, if I do say so myself. We drove back right after the wedding, making it a very late night, so yesterday was completely written off as a relaxation day. Christina and I lay in Riley Park for about 3 hours, watching cricket, reading, and listening to music on her iPhone. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

Work is frantic, and even now I am deferring some work on the pending UAT kickoff which happens this week. By the time I get home there is no time or ambition for personal projects, so the mental list I keep for myself continues to grow. Finishing this site is near the top, but doesn't look to be happening soon.

I've been busy.
Really busy. Every now and then I'll think of something that has just happened and want to write about it, but don't feel like I have the time. So I'm taking some now. Actually, what prompts me is the fact that I just wrote a long-ish email to Erica about what's been up lately, so I think I'll just paste most of that here, hehe:

Summer really started rather early around here for me, since I got my first sunburn sometime in mid-April, which was nice. Christina and I had ridden the bikes into Inglewood to a little breakfast cafe and ate on the patio. If you guys *do* come in for a couple days we'll definately be hitting that spot, it's one of my new favorites!
Summer has not, otherwise, been very impressive, with only two other good weekends since that first one. We have been taking every opportunity to take the bikes out, and just a couple weeks ago did a nice ride to Banff for the night. It was Christina's first time on the highway, which was a really good experience for her, and was my first time in many months to go dancing at a club, which was equally educational.
Of our six total weddings for this summer we've gone through two, and the next one up has us booked as MC's for the event. Scary.
Last year was pretty busy with sports during the summer, so I'm scaling back to just Ultimate Frisbee, and ended up becoming team captain for my team this year. I'm really more of a figurehead though. I do the "three cheers for the other guys" bit after games, and Christina does pretty much everything else. It's a pretty sweet team, with people from "church", "people we used to work with", and "friends & family" spheres all coming together. Somehow they've all cohesed to make a really fun group.
In addition to all the weddings we've got slated we must find time for a couple of camping trips, progressively longer bike trips (culminating in our trip out to Vancouver to see Jack Johnson in late-ish August), and at least a few weekends to relax and snooze in the park, so it's going to be a pretty busy season...

That paints the highlights with a pretty broad brush. There's been a lot more going on with work and such, but I'll write that up later. Maybe even later today... We'll see.

In something of an anti-climax I find myself back in Calgary after only a brief stint out west. Utterly unsurprising delays in getting a development environment set up, and some unexpected changes in scope mean that I have still some details which need clarification before development in earnest can begin, and the absence of my technical resource means that any preliminary development could as easily be done from home. So here I am. On the upside, Victoria is an absolutely beautiful and charming city. I did take a few pictures, but they're pretty low quality. I will try to upload them anyway when I get a chance, and may supplement them with better shots on a subsequent visit, which now is looking like March 10th at the earliest.

Christina and I joined Steve and Julene last Tuesday to see Josh Ritter here in concert. If you haven't heard his music I'd recommend checking him out. Very few artists that I can name fail to dissapoint me, and he's on the happy side of that list.

Recently I've been hearing about Armageddon Empires, so downloaded the demo to take it for a ride. In it I've found something which has been missing for a very long time. The game plays like an old-school tabletop game, combined with the chancy strategy of a collectible card game. I've played both genres to some degree, but the limiting factor has always been rounding up enough enthusiastic opponents, which is nicely circumvented by the available AI players. While not quite the same style of game, it fills a gap for me which has been missing since my last wargaming enterprise, Warhammer 40K, was reluctantly retired. I've actually installed Warhammer's Dawn of War RTS at home, and have enjoyed getting back into this, more accessible form of the universe, but AE is providing a truly traditional play style that is engaging as well.

Well wouldn't you know it... Just as I began to settle in and enjoy my time on the bench I get slated for redeployment. I'm actually kind of excited about the opportunity, which will be an integration project between SharePoint and CRM, which are both somewhat new to me. I love to learn new technologies, so this will be a very interesting project, and the more I read about the two products and integration strategies the more interested I get. We'll see if that interest survives the rigors of "real world" experience.

In other news, I've been playing around a little bit with EWL development, and made a tiny project to get my feet wet. I've got a plan to build a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file editor, which is simple enough for me to start with, but complex enough to explore the API and remember how to use C. One thing I love about Enlightenment is the community support. Playing around with the code and getting advice from people in #e on the FreeNode IRC server actually makes me feel like part of the open source community, even though I'm not exactly breaking new ground or anything. It's just fun to play, especially when some other kids are playing too, hehe.

I'm at the office. The office, of my actual employer. For the first time in over two years I'm not on contract, and now am trying to fit back into the groove of things here. This is the first of three events of note; possibly the most important, certainly the least interesting. I'm "on the bench" here and waiting my next adventure.

The second of these three happenings is the big family gathering at Big White. Despite a rocky start — thanks to WestJet, who loaded, then unloaded Christina's main bag from the plane, forcing us to wait an hour in the airport for it to arrive on the next flight — we arrived not terribly behind schedule, and enjoyed an evening of visiting and relaxation with the fam. In the morning we hit the slopes, and had a fantastic day skiing and boarding together. It's interesting to contrast the ease with which we all were able to keep together against the difficulty with the same task on the trip to Fernie earlier this year. It's great to be able to enjoy the whole mountain as a group, and not have to feel like one member is holding the group back.

Our third event was yet another ski trip, back to Fernie this time. A revisit of a trip last year, to the same lodge we had used, but with a largely changed group. Fernie was absolutely drowning in snow, and the hill conditions were perfect. Unfortunately, between the last paragraph and this one, I had come down with "something", most of which had passed, leaving a condition which carefully walked the line between sounding serious and actual misery, so I didn't hit the hill very hard. Christina had brought her sisters showboard up, and I took the opportunity to try and teach her on an actual hill. She ended up doing really well, and was clearing runs on both edge's by the days end. It was a great trip, and quite relaxing, but I think that both of us are ready for a weekend that looks more like camping out on my couch in front of the TV for eight hours at a stretch. Handy that I've stumbled on one of my favorite folk heros featuring in a show that looks like a perfect fit for the occasion.

The group from The Hub had their annual Winter Retreat event at Camp Caroline this past weekend, and I was there for (I believe) the sixth time. It was a lot of fun, but our room, supposedly set aside for the non-snoring contingent, was not nearly as silent as hoped for. I would estimate that I snuck in two hours or less of sleep all weekend, so the whole affair passed in a bit of a haze. I do remember a few points though. Attendance was higher than I've seen before, which was nice, but meant that there were not many opportunities to just be alone, which I always enjoy at retreat-type events. Christina brought a snowboard, borrowed from Carmella, and tried a few runs on the tubing hill with quite good success. We also spent time in the pool and hot tub, sat around the fire, played games, ate continuously, and spent quality time in fellowship and worship with the group. It was a fun time, but not entirely restful, so when we got back Sunday afternoon I passed out for a couple of hours. In the evening Christina's parents took us for her birthday to Silver Dragon, which is a chinese restaurant downtown. We had a good meal there and visited with them for a couple of hours before heading back to my place to wind down.

Yesterday was Christina's birthday, so last Friday I had ordered some flowers for Monday delivery to her office, which was a little trickier than it should have been since her office isn't technically on the map. Even Google Maps can't find it, and so there was some question as to whether or not the delivery would be succesful or not... Anyway, they did arrive on time and intact, so that's good. I had struggled a bit with finding a good idea for something to do for her birthday, and eventually decided against trying to plan a big party, which for me is always a lot of work and generally not very successful. With being so busy recently I thought it would be nice to scale things back a little so planned a quiet outting to Prince's Island Park with a thermos of hot cholocate made "from scratch" with real chocolate and milk and vanilla, where we could sit with a blanket on a bench and drink and talk and look at the city, then over to River Cafe for a nice dinner. This was nearly successful, but since River Cafe was closed we instead visited the downtown side of the park, in Eau Clair and went for dinner to Oceana. It turned out to be a very nice little evening, and she seemed happy with it, which is really all I'm after.

The remainder of the week sees me spending a fair bit of time alone, which will be a nice change from our recent hectic schedule, as Christina will be off on her own affairs or having fun with Jacelyn. I've got a little house cleaning, video gaming, and edje/ewl/efl/e17 experimenting on the menu. Generally just retracting into my shell and being a hermit. Gathering strength before the family trip to Big White, which should be a great time. I'll probably give a full report once I'm back.

Happy New Year to everybody...

If there was some sort of smiley-face icon for feeling like an old man with aches from your toes to your neck I'd be using it right here. I'm back from Fernie, which despite, or possibly thanks to my prior admitted rough shape, was a really fun time. Christina and I drove out with Brian and Erin, and put in a full day at the hill on Friday after meeting up with the rest of the crew. Once again I'm reminded that I don't like doing things with a large group, as we spent a good deal of time over the course of the trip waiting and organizing. Good times though, which I'll summarize as piles and piles of great snow, killer accomodations - including sweet hot-tub action, games and drinking and fun with friends, a New Years celebration with champagne and fireworks and a smooch(!), and nominal safety for everyone at the end of it all.

And now it's back to "real life". Which doesn't actually disappoint me terribly much. I'm ready to wind my time down on this contract and see what the future will hold. I'm ready for a period of rest to recover from the holidays. I'm ready to start a new year, and find what it holds. I'm not really ready to get back to work though, which is why I'm still writing... :P

I resolve to finish this site. This year. Or maybe next year...

Merry Christmas to everybody!

As the final work day begins winding down before the holidays I can feel the stress leaking from my body, running down the leg of my chair and collecting in a pool below, and somewhat in front of, my desk. It will simmer there and await my return. But until then I fly; out of the building and through downtown, with maybe a quick stop or two for any last minute items, then on to my apartment and couch and computer, where DPI problems evade resolution (pardon the pun). This year I'm staying in Calgary for Christmas. The first time not being "home" with the family, and it definately feels odd. There are a few elements of our traditional family Christmas that I will miss, like the postcard-perfect hominess of the living room with a fireplace going and comfortable couches and Mom and Liz whipping up something tasty in the kitchen; or the absolute quiet of the farm and how the spirit of that place is so restful and peaceful; or Christmas Eve when we have a fondue or group-cooking meal and open gifts. I know a lot of people get stressed out over the holidays but for me it has always been a time when I've felt the most blessed. Christmas with Christina's family will be a lot of fun, and I'm sure we'll make many memories, but I'll still miss home :)

Ahh good, it's December again. That wonderful time of year when the only daylight I see is that small bit peaking through the window, over the top of the cubicle wall of my neighbour across the hall which lies just outside my door. When the radiant heating in my apartment can almost keep up with the chill fighting its way in through the weak points in my insulative defenses. When walking to work means deciding between frost bitten ears and sweaty toque hair. The most wonderful time of the year...

I finally got a chance this weekend to spend a little time with the new computer I've assembled, and I must say that it's blazing fast. I've got Windows dual-booted this time, because the attrocious state of linux gaming really kills the mood when all I want to do is shoot some bad guys. On the other side I've switched to Ubuntu, not because of any serious problems with core Debian, but mostly because I'm curious to try out a distribution with such robust user support. So far I'm pretty happy with it, mostly because of the one button nVidia driver installation, neccessarily contrasted against the Debian ordeal. Last night I got e17 put together and running and I'm building directly out of CVS this time instead of fooling around with packages. I spotted this icon set today and think that it might make a snazzy replacement for the stock icons, which might be the extent of my customization for a while (aside from switching to Detour, which is awesome). I'm tempted to simply revel in a "working" environment for a bit before sticking my fingers in it again. Oh, and no progress on the site :P

"... jumping the gap between zero and one...". That's brilliant. Come back Ze, I miss you. It really feels these days like I'm not jumping that gap very successfully, but an absolute deluge of work might be helping to keep me down. Insert sad face here. Still no progress on the site, hehe.

I seem to have survived Brazil, which is nice. Though I was unable to get a supply of Cachaça, the uniquely Brazillian liquor used to create the magnificant Caipirinha, under the influence of which I was sedated for large portions of the journey. I'm going to see if I can convince Mauricio to bring me back some, or to find a local supplier. You could get a 750ml bottle at the grocer for (as low as) R$5, which is right around $2.50 CAD. Not what I'm used to paying for liquor. Nice crisp beer was valued at around R$0.50 per can, and decent wine could be had for R$15.00 ‹sigh›... Anyway enough about the booze. The trip itself was a great time, and though the group did, at times, feel the strain of such close quarters, I believe we're all closer for it. Especially after shared suffering in the form of mechanical failure, trepidatious weather, and soul crushing airport delays. Full details are in my personal journal, which likely won't be published here, but may surface in bits and bobs from time to time. Christina, and to a lesser extent, myself, have posted some pictures on our respective flickr sites.

Upon arrival I was greeted with the awkwardness of having been tentatively disengaged from my current deployment at work, which means that the client is scrambling to get a replacement, and I'm left to sort out a documentation and knowledge transfer nightmare. I knew it was coming, but the timing could have been more tactful or convenient. Anyway, this means that there will be no spare time at all for cleaning up or implementing functionality on this site. Stay tuned.

Hopes of getting this site functionally implemented in full PHP today were dashed by a flurry of activity late yesterday, which has spilled over into my nice, clean, blank schedule which today's calendar had proudly displayed. I'm now scrambling to get my comments in on a code review for another app. News that my order is not (and will not be) ready means that I am frantically searching for a gift to contribute for the my part of "Secret Santa". Proofing a draft has occupied my morning, depsite my expectations that it would be wrapped yesterday. Finally, notes from my bike trip are still waiting for archival in my Moleskine, which must be done before I leave in order for the Brazil trip to be "on the record". To those various ends I will toss off this quick post, and get on it. Pics when I get back.

Alive, but limping. Still getting a few wrinkles in templates and graphics worked out before "turning on" the navigation and links. Hopefully will be fully functional by the end of the week. If not it'll have to wait until November as I'll be beaching it up in Brazil until then. In the meantime check out the links in the sidebar for some sites worth your time.

It's alive!

Welcome to the current iteration of my humble home on the web. My track record is pretty bad when it comes to maintaining a personal website, but I'm here to give it another shot. As this is the first entry to my blog I will give credit to a few of the resources I used when making this site. All fonts and brushes are used without permission, requested or recieved, from the author. Hope that's not a problem.

Attribution - noun : The act of attributing, especially the act of establishing a particular person as the creator of a work of art:

• prAna.com made me want to try a "distressed" or "painted" style site.
• Textures from RHBrushStrokes2 brush set.
• Minor detailing with Swirly Ornaments brush set.
• Frakt font provided letter shapes for dk emblem.
• Windsong font used for script menu text.
• Flickr Badge code, with modifications, for sidebar photos.

There is still a lot of work to do here, and I anticipate progress will be glacial. Hopefully once things are in place I will be able to keep up to date with current events in my life, things that are interesting to me or that I am working on, and the places on the internet I consider best worth returning to.

Thanks for visiting!