Elvalia, as always

My Photo Collection

2009-07-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Since my dad bought his new camera, he and I have been taking pictures of anything and everything, just catching pretty moments in time. I was taking pictures today, and while emptying the memory card, I was perusing my many albums of random shots that no one is ever likely to see. Except, I kind of think that some of them are good. So I shall display a bunch of them here, and I'll continue to put up a few at a time, and share my amateur photography with whoever has time to kill.

These two pictures were taken just after we got the camera. I'm not even sure whether it was I or my father who took them. We both spent a lot of time playing with the settings and testing things by taking pictures of the chickadees and mourning doves through the garden door.

This is another one that was taken not too long after we got the camera. I was impressed by the zoom the camera had - the bird was far enough away that I didn't know it had anything in its mouth until I looked at the picture.

This was part of my experimentation with shutter speed.

This was more fooling around with shutter speed, and trying to get clear close-ups.

This is a porcupine, obviously. What was funny about him is that his backdrop is my house. It was early spring, I'd just gotten home from school and was about to head upstairs when I saw him right outside the garden door and stopped short. So I headed outside with the camera and took lots of pictures. He was scared to death I think, because he hardly moved. Eventually he decided that he'd had enough and waddled off, but I was out there less than a meter away from him for a good 15 minutes.

Gamerama

2009-07-19T23:46:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

I can't seem to find any inspiration anywhere for another blog post (or whatever it is you'd like to call it). I have three unfinished posts started at various points over the last month and saved in case I felt like going back to finish them, but I never quite went back, and obviously, now I've completely lost my trains of thought. And, to make my amateur-writer's block more bearable, I've gone and installed my favouritest video game ever, the one that made me want to start gaming in the first place, and the one that is the inspiration for my internet pseudonym, Neverwinter Nights. So, in the spirit of nostalgia, I'm going to be writing various random tidbits about my games.

I think that the earliest video game I can remember playing was Super Mario Kart for the SNES. I know I played games before that, because I remember there being a DOS computer with huge floppy discs and games at my grandma's house, but I don't know what the games were. My brothers would always kick my ass at Mario Kart, and I hated that. Especially in battle mode. I wasn't completely hopeless in the racing department, but as soon as we got into battle mode, my sorry little balloons would just pop and pop and pop. But, I still had fun playing that, and (surprisingly enough, considering my age, which must have been about 5 or 6 I think) watching everyone else play. My dad is colour blind, so he'd get me (and/or whoever else had to sit out that round) to tell him what colour his shells were; red or green. I loved getting to help him play. It wasn't until years later that I found out that despite his colour blindness, he knew damn well what shell was what the whole time.

Around the same time as Mario Kart, my brothers and I would play Mario (and of course Kirby Superstar - that's the one cartridge I can ever remember losing. It just vanished). The ones that stick out in my memory are Yoshi's island and Super Mario Brothers 3 (I'm not even sure that one was actually for the SNES - it's on this four-in-one cartridge that I think were all NES games ported). Those stick out for me because I wouldn't play them, I'd "play" them. I'd go along until an enemy confused me or hit my character, then I'd pause it and hand it over to my brother, who would get past that part and hand me back the controller. Looking back, I don't know why he put up with all that. He would basically beat every level for me, and all the bosses too. I guess he's a better brother than I ever knew.

Next came - wait for it - the N64! But that will have to wait for another time. I'll continue this random stream of thoughts and memories later.

Sharks, Serial Killers, and Forum Lurkers

2009-06-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

I was reading about the parallels that have been drawn between great white sharks and human serial killers. Apparently, the way they hunt is very similar. Great whites will observe their prey from a distance before attacking, will attack discretely from an unguarded angle, and will attack when there are no other sharks around for competition. They also learn from previous attacks and improve their hunting techniques with time. To me, that just sounds like simple, smart hunting, survival of the fittest and all that - the fittest are the ones that adapt and strategise. Now, it's easy to see how a serial killer "hunts" in much the same way, except for the matter of motive (which was brought up in the original article).

My take on this? Serial killers are malicious, sharks are not. Sharks need to eat. Serial killers... they may think they need to kill, but it's not a necessity in the way that food is - life would go on with or without murdering someone (well, if someone was murdered, life wouldn't go on for them...). No, no; the shark's actions made me think of a forum lurker more than anything else.

I'm not saying that a shark acts more like a lurker than a serial killer. It just seemed to me that there are quite a few similarities. Hanging around in the background, just waiting for a good time to kill (post), studying the way things work before jumping in, being very very careful...

The only thing that really bothers me about this shark-serial killer-lurker thing is that from here I can't say that forum lurkers are like serial killers. It'd be jolly good fun to point out all the similarities and draw amusingly illogical conclusions, but I could also point out how puppy dogs are similar to con artists. How about no.

So, I won't say that lurkers and serial killers, I'll just leave you with this thought, and I do hope you dwell on it: how do you know that your friendly forum lurker isn't a serial killer, hmm? That's right. Think about it.

Obama and the Fly

2009-06-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

How on Earth is it that people are murdered every day, interesting things happen every day, and yet what made international news last week? Obama killing a fly, that's what. How incredibly ridiculous. Does the US have the rest of the world so whipped that now we all hang on every movement their president makes?

I'm done the rant now. This is the fun part; PETA! They say that now they'll be sending President Obama a humane bug catcher, so that in the future if he has any fly problems, he won't have to resort to killing it. That's People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who reportedly euthanises 97% of the animals that end up in the organisation's care (2 209 animals last year according to petakillsanimals.com). The irony is just too much for me.

To be fair, I have to point out that PETA has written about their euthanasia program, and why they do it. They basically say that it's all to stop animal suffering, and the animals they put down were in dire straights (That's from the PETA blog, but be careful: there are graphic pictures in there). That's all very noble, but last year the Drug Enforcement Administration was investigating PETA for their poor conduct with euthanised animals' corpses, and how they euthanise animals. Of course, the employees took the fall for the corpse-in-the-dumpster fiasco, but I can't help but question whether PETA as a group didn't condone this.

PETA has always been a bit of a sore point for me, because I don't know what to believe. The PETA blog is biased - oh, probably - and petakillsanimals.com is biased in the other direction - I'd say so. A lot of the other sources I looked at sited those two as their sources. Lovely.

But, one things is definitely nuts, and hilarious - the Obama fly thing.

Back Home From Away...

2009-03-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

First try at writing a blog of my own. I've always been kind of skeptical about whether people actually read these things, honestly. I guess I'll find out for myself before to long. And, in the meantime, I'll chalk this up as a good writing exercise.

So, recently in my world: I just got back from CUTC, the Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference. I actually had the time if my life while I was there. Everyone was nice, and I met a lot of very interesting people (not the least of whom was Julian Spillane, important-type guy from Frozen North, an independent Canadian gaming company). The airport was terrifying. Pearson International Airport was like nothing I'd ever seen before in my life. It was incredibly huge, and the people there were just plain unfriendly. You know how they say that the Maritimes are where you find the friendliest people in Canada? It kind of felt very true at that point. I guess I was just unlucky though, because I found lots of friendly people at the conference, once I actually got there.

While I was there (I left home on Wednesday March 11 and came back late that Saturday), I went to seminars and such, exactly what you'd expect of a conference. There was a talk on Engineers Without Borders, which I loved. I've loved the things that group does ever since I heard of it. Hats off to anyone who has been a part of it. Also, I was lucky enough to not only have a talk with some Infusion reps, but also to play with a Microsoft Surface. Cool? Very.

The couple of days I spent in Toronto were just insane. I felt like I never stopped moving. I was more than a little sad to leave, considering all the people I'd met. Thanks to Facebook, I might end up staying somewhat in touch with quite a few of them though, which is good. I definitely plan on going back to the conference next year.

Which brings me back home, where I am. All day, I had to put up with the question "How was nerd camp?". Honestly, nerd camp? That was what we called Shad Valley, it's not what I'd call CUTC. Either way, I'm back, I had a great time, you should all be jealous if you didn't go, and I'm not that much of a nerd, I swear...