Know the currency and ask the price first

A couple of things I'll try to keep in mind when traveling are to always ask the price and to be able to understand the answer.

One story was a group of people (who will remain nameless) were traveling in Rome and decided that they wanted to stop for some gelato. They found a quiet place and ordered 5 gelato's and a beer for the group. They didn't look at any menu's, they just picked stuff through the counter. I believe that the bill was 78 euros which today works out to ~ 125 $. Always ask the price before ordering.

Another story from another friend where they were traveling and many times their flight would make stops in Dubai. While waiting for their connecting flight, they'd make a stop at starbucks and get a coffee and some cake. Since this was never a destination, they'd never have any of the local currency or understand the conversion so they would always just pay with their credit card. This recent time they must gone to a different starbucks that didn't take credit cards. Thankfully the starbucks took canadian dollars. The staff did the conversion and it worked out to 25$. The friend was astounded how much they had been paying coffee and cake all this time. Knowing the price isn't any good if you don't understand it.

Got a hate on for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 279

I was not amused by the Ottawa transit strike before. I'm furious now that they voted "no" to the cities offer. How many places that you can think of where you can tell your boss what time you will work? Who wears the pants in that relationship? In the past it doesn't seem like it was the city. That leads you to having sites like fireottawabusdrivers.com. The issue seems to be the union vs the rest of the city.

I'm pretty pissed right now, but what makes it worse is when I find quotes likes this

you cant compare a doctor with a driver- they are on 2 completely differently playing fields. they dont have to endure the hardships bus drivers do

Hardships...

The thing that sucks about this strike is that the people who are the most vulnerable are the ones most effected by this. It's disgusting. Sick, elderly, business just scrapping by, people who don't have access to transportation. The union can't see past their noses.

Dear Drivers: I hope that the best offer you get is less than the current one on the table. I hope that this bankrupts as many of you as businesses that you are bankrupting. I hope that as many of you lose your jobs as you've caused others to lose. I hope you stay out till June.

Shoot from the hip

Sometimes I spend far too much time on the flickr last 7 days interesting page just looking at photos. Getting ideas on composition, lighting, techniques... One thing that occurred to me this morning is that for like 95%+ of the shots that I really like from that page, they all have had some editing done with photoshop (aka PS). I've got nothing against PS, but that's going to be another set to techniques that I'll have to learn and get ramped up on. It just doesn't feel like that would be a fast process at all.

I don't know if it's because I enjoy the "style", or because I'm rationalizing it because I'm lazy, but I enjoy the straight-out-of-the-camera look to photos. It just feels more "honest" if that makes any sense. You know that's actually what it looked like, not because someone sat in front of PS for a couple of hours making a composite of totally different things.

Having said all that I'll probably get a book on PS and start tweaking some photos - sharpening here, blurring there... If I go into the effort of taking a good shot, then it would be a shame if it just needed 5 more minutes of tweaking to make it the best it can be. :-/

I must be adopted...

I come from a family of car guys. The type of guys who can identify make / model / year from something like a headlight. Guys who buy auto trader for casual reading. Guys who spend most of their day wondering how to put a bigger engine on something. I'm not one of those guys.

Recently I went with my brother to princess auto. He was buying a sockets that were the size of my fist. I bought a blow torch and was quite excited about it. When I told my brother in the store that I plan to use it for crËme br˚lÈe he told me to shush because he didn't want anyone else to hear. For Christmas my dad and brothers got things like torque and adjustable wrenches while I got really nice cutting boards from 3 different people.

Some times I wonder why I'm so different then the rest of my family. It's nothing that I'm concerned about, but it's funny how people raised in the same house can have interests that are so vastly different.

My First DSLR

I did it. I ordered a digital SLR camera. Namely a Nikon D60 with 8-55 VR and 55-200 VR lenses. I'm also going to pick up a UV filter and a memory card. I'll think about getting a new bag and a spare battery. FSM help me if I just use it as a point and shoot all the time. I really want to get into more interesting types of photography and play around with things like HDR and tilt shift. Most of all, I want to take better pictures. I understand that the camera can play a small role in that, but it can certainly help. I figure that I'll start off with an actual "my first SRL" type of camera rather than jumping into something that's more towards the professional end of the spectrum.

My next thought is how am I going to use this when travelling - do I store it in a backpack? A camera bag that looks like a backpack? I think that a lot of cameras bags are the over-the-shoulder type of bag so you can easily get to your stuff, but I find that type of bag ends up hurting me. We're coming up to a trip so I can try it out there. I'll just have to do some test runs with it first.

Now I just have to wait for the camera parts to come into the store. There is only one camera body left in all the henry's in the city. The closest 8-55 VR lens is in Brampton... I don't expect to have my new toy until Jan. 10th. I want it now, but what can you do. That's what I get for buying / ordering it 3 hours before the sale ends.

NEW TOY!!!! :-D

Distributed blogging

Something that I've always wanted to be able to do when traveling is to blog as you go. However, that usually means you're connected to the internet for the whole time you want to read / write. I wanted an "offline" blog that I could sync a handheld computer at a coffee shop (in the amount of time it took to buy a coffee) and then continue on my way. Perhaps to read any comments at the hotel that night. Perhaps compose a post while waiting for a leg of a flight. It's just inconvenient and expensive to have to pay by the minute to be able to write blog posts and read comments.

Ryan pointed out jekyll as a way using git to generate a static blog. That way you could write posts locally, and sync them to a service / web server that would publish them. Now that's a cool idea.

The place where it breaks down in my head is when you want some give and take on a blog - comments. For anyone leaving comments they are not going to have an account with my source control server. People are going to want to post a comment and see instant feedback. That can be done with software fine - that's how this blog works. To try and keep the garbage out (comment spam), you'll have to require some form of logic on the server to stop that.

Comments are one of my favourite things about blogging, so I wouldn't want to move to software that doesn't support that most basic of needs. I don't really want to totally re-invent the wheel and re-implement all blog software because, frankly, I'm much too lazy for that. So I see the issue not as "how do I write better blog software" but as "how do I swap out the backend of existing blog software to meet my needs". Now, swapping out a backend that was designed for db and changing it to a flat file is probably way harder that it would be in theory.

Changing a backend for existing cots products doesn't fit the do the simplest thing that could possibly work, but redoing all the front end work and anti spam measures doesn't either. I'll have to think about this one some more.

Are you pregnant?

We've been in our house for more than a year and we've been married for more than 4 months. That means when ever we're around family or friends one of the questions that always seems to be asked is "is Laura pregnant?" because apparently that's the next logical step. It feels like the question is pretty much guaranteed every outing at this point. If Laura's not drinking alcohol? Then it doesn't matter what we answer, we just get a "riiiiight" followed by a wink.

So frustrating.